


A Tale of Two Dracos (But Only One Ginny)

by Anise



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Drama & Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Secrets, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-16 07:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18089810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anise/pseuds/Anise
Summary: Worlds collide when Draco and Ginny make a desperate attempt to keep Voldemort from rising in an alternate reality. But first, they must confront the sinister secrets of their shared past... in both our world and their own. And some of those secrets are dark indeed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Yes, I’m FINALLY posting this exchange fic from 2017! Yay! This is a revised version, though, and it gets a LOT more explicit. The warnings/ descriptions are for later chapters, we’re not going to get into things like “consensual but not safe or sane” or “memories of past child abuse” for awhile, but they WILL eventually apply-- so be warned.

 Also, check out the FIA Youtube channel. There’s a new D/G video up at: [New Youtube Video!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLp7DaWsrcI%20%20%C2%A0)

 

 

 

++++++++

 

_July 1st, 2002_

_The Ministry of Magic, Somewhere in London_

++++

 

Ginny glanced around Kingsley Shacklebolt’s office. It looked more or less the same as the office of the Minister of Magic always had—shelves of leather-bound books and parchments, a large, mahogany desk, its surface scattered with quills and inkpots and manuscripts, weary owls flying in and out, carrying messages from other departments. She remembered so well when her father had worked at the Ministry, and it had seemed like a fascinating, forbidden place to her childhood self, full of magic and secrets and mystery.

 

Well, it had lost its fascination now.

 

“I’m not going to do this,” said Ginny flatly.

 

“Ginny Weasley,” said the minister in his deep, sonorous voice. He said only her name, no more, but she stiffened at the tone. It was almost the same one her father had always used when he was disappointed by her, or sad because of something she had failed to do. There was no menace in it, no warning, no real anger. And somehow, that made it worse. It was the voice that Arthur Weasley had always used when he reminded Ginny of her responsibilities, and when he felt that she hadn’t lived up to them. It made her feel sad and inadequate and defensive, and filled with fear, somewhere in the bottom of her heart, that he was right. That she hadn’t done enough, hadn’t lived up to her duties. That she could do more, and he would not let her get away with less.

 

Maybe Shacklebolt had actually learned that voice from her father for this very occasion.

 

But at least he hadn’t said, _this is what your father would have wanted. This is what your father would have asked of you. If only he hadn’t died in the war, if only Fred and George had survived, if… if only._

“Yes, I’m well aware of my name,” she snapped, knowing just how ungraceful she sounded. “My answer is still the same. You don’t know if this is going to work. You don’t even know if it’s real, just that it’s theoretically possible.  All you know for sure is that if it did work, I’d have to meet… that I’ll have to see, to hear…” She licked her lips, which had gone bone dry. “Him.”

 

“I know. And I am more sorry for that than I can say.” The Minister’s voice was very quiet. Maybe he’d lost the ability to speak any louder during the last half hour of repeating the facts again and again, thought Ginny, laying out the arguments, trying to overcome her objections to this insane project, one by one.

 

And he had. Or he almost had, or would have done, anyway. But then, at the very end, he’d told her what this thing would really involve. Who she’d have to face, and perhaps fight, and certainly somehow outwit and overcome. The man, and he had once been a man, who had laid a shadow over her entire life. Who had dealt her a wound that had never truly healed. Who had taken her father and three of her brothers from her, who had turned her mother into a shadow of her former self.

 

_No. No, I won’t, I can’t._

“I really can’t,” she whispered, realizing too late that she had spoken at all. “I wish I could, I really do, but… but no.” Her voice gained strength.

 

She had fled the wizarding world and started her own life after the last battle, five years before. She would have destroyed herself if she had not; she understood that now. And she had rebuilt her fragile self too recently, the structure of her personality was still much too unsteady, and the slightest push in exactly the wrong spot could topple her over. She could not do what the Minister asked. No!

 

Shacklebolt stood silently. Had he finally figured out that there was nothing more he could do or say that would convince her to take part in this insane attempt? Whether he had or not, his silence was even worse than his pleas had been.

 

What would happen if she simply started for the door? Ginny wondered. This might be the perfect time to flee.  Harry was somewhere in the building, and at some point, he was bound to come into this office. He was an Auror, after all, the youngest one in the division, of course, a rising star, and he might consult with the Minister ten times a day for all she knew. It was amazing that she’d managed to avoid running into Harry so far.

 

But then, if she left, maybe she’d run into him in the corridor. That would be even worse.

 

And she’d rather die than see him.

 

As she hesitated, Shacklebolt opened his mouth and began to speak again. She had a horrible feeling of foreboding before she even heard the first word. And with each passing word, she knew she’d been right.

 

“In this alternate reality, there was a second child,” the Minister said. “Another whose life Thomas Riddle touched and tainted. Another who barely escaped with scars that perhaps never truly healed. “

 

“Another… child?” Ginny whispered, turning back.

 

“Yes, and one even younger than you were.”

 

Ginny closed her eyes, seeing herself again at the age of eleven, a pale, small child, short for her age, dressed in patched robes and shoes shined to conceal their shabbiness. Eager and naïve, easily led to near-destruction. And the Minister was talking about a child even smaller than she’d been then. She pictured a little girl like a younger sister, looking up at her with pleading eyes, begging for her help…

 

He went on, his voice smooth and rich, impossible to ignore or block out. “Another child who grew to be an adult who tiptoes on the edge of destruction. But perhaps… that person could be saved, as well.”

 

_Oh, gods no. It doesn’t make any difference, it doesn’t! I’m not changing my mind. I’m not agreeing to do this thing. I don’t even know who this hypothetical child is! And I still don’t believe for one second that any of this will work, anyway. The entire idea is crazy…_

Having thoroughly decided all of that, Ginny walked back towards the minister’s desk. “I’ll do it,” she said.

 

He smiled, white teeth flashing in the golden light that spilled from the floor lamp. “Thank you, Miss Weasley.” He began to go over a sheaf of papers.

 

Don’t thank me yet, thought Ginny. She still didn’t believe that this insane idea to travel to an alternate reality and somehow affect its outcome was even possible. It was past any magic she knew or had ever even heard of. But… but before the knowledge that a second child was somehow tangled in Thomas Riddle’s web in that other reality, she’d hoped that she was right about this impossibility. Now that she knew, and she felt oddly sure that what Shacklebolt had said was true, she hoped that she was wrong.

 

“The spell is nearly complete,” said the Minister, straightening up. “I will return shortly, and then we will perform the ritual.” He turned to leave. Then, just before he went through the door into the corridor, he turned back to Ginny.

 

“Ah, I almost forgot. You will be working with a partner.”

 

Ginny had been leaning over the desk. Now, she shot upright. “What?”

 

“I’d believed when I first contacted you regarding this matter that your efforts would be sufficient,” said Shacklebolt in his softly lilting voice. “But I was not correct. You will need a partner, and he ought to have arrived by now.”

 

For an awful moment, Ginny was sure that she knew who this as-yet-unnamed partner had to be. _Harry Potter._ Which would also explain why Shacklebolt hadn’t told her right away. Everyone in the wizarding world certainly knew about their disastrous breakup, two years after the war had ended. Although their relationship would have been a whole lot more disastrous if it had gone on any longer, she knew.

 

_Oh, gods. That has to be it. Harry is going to walk through that door any second._

And it would make a horrible kind of sense for her unnamed partner to be Harry, because he was, after all, an up and coming Auror. He was probably being sent as an expert of some kind. She’d have to work with him, and she’d guessed right away that she’d have to be working closely with this as-yet unknown partner.  And every time she looked into his face, she would remember the sight that she could never forgot. Harry on the battlefield at Hogwarts four years earlier, his eyes stunned and blank, the enormity of what he’d done hovering somewhere just outside his mind. Or rather, what he hadn’t done. He had finally played the hero, yes. He had defeated Voldemort. He had saved the entire wizarding world.

 

But he had waited too long to save _everyone_ in it. Or nearly everyone.

 

Too many had died that day-- people who almost certainly would have survived if Harry hadn’t hesitated just those few crucial minutes before going out to meet Voldemort. Half of Ginny’s family were among them. And she could never forget that.

 

But she couldn’t back out now. Ginny knew that. If Harry was there, perhaps that was even more of a reason for her to be there too in order to help the child. She somehow didn’t think that would be Harry’s biggest strength. She took a deep breath.

 

“It’s Harry. Isn’t it. He’s going to be my partner,” she said resolutely.

 

“No, Harry Potter will not be accompanying you,” said the minister, breaking into her thoughts.

 

The wave of relief that surged through Ginny left her weak in the knees. She clutched onto the back of a chair for support, as surreptitiously as she could. “I don’t mind who it is as long as it’s not Harry,” she said, much more honestly than she had meant to do. “You… “ She hesitated. “You do know why, don’t you?”

 

Shacklebolt looked sad for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

 

A small screech owl fluttered between them then, and the Minister took a scroll from its proffered beak. He scanned the lines. “Your partner has arrived. I will send him in now, and I will return shortly.”

 

 “I don’t care who it is as long as it’s not Harry,” Ginny said fervently, and less quietly than she would have liked.

 

Was there actually a hint of a smile on Shacklebolt’s dark face? No. Surely not.

 

As Shacklebolt walked out, Ginny heard footsteps approaching the door from the other direction. Nobody, Ginny decided, could possibly be worse than Harry, no matter who her partner turned out to be.. She’d rather have a _nyone_ than him.

 

As soon as the door opened, she was reminded of an old saying her father had been fond of repeating.

 

_Be careful what you ask for.  You just might get it._

Draco Malfoy walked into the office of the Minister of Magic.

 

Ginny could tell that he hadn’t seen her right away. He couldn’t possibly be so calm if he had spotted her on walking in, so undisturbed. And he looked as undisturbed as always, as if nothing could possibly ruffle his smooth, privileged self. As if he stood a bit apart from the common herd, a tad above those who weren’t in his class. She knew she was being unfair even as she thought these things, but she didn’t particularly care.

 

He was as striking as ever, she saw. He had grown into his unusual looks a good bit more than he had at the age of seventeen, when she’d done so much more with him than she should have, or nineteen, when she’d last spoken a single word to him. He had the look of a young man now, not a boy. She drank in the sight of him for those last few moments before he saw her, when that handsome face of his would doubtless twist into a scowl, just as it had done that last time they’d spoken four years earlier. As always, he wasn’t conventionally handsome, not really. His cheekbones were too high, his nose and chin too pointed, his silvery gray eyes too large for his pale face, his body a little too lean, his hands and feet too large for his slight build.

 

And yet… as always, he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

 

Ginny’s face twisted in a scowl that could match any of his at that thought. Unfortunately, her face still wore the unpleasant expression when he walked out of the vestibule and into the office itself, and that was how he saw her. Too late, Ginny realized it.

 

He didn’t match her less-than-welcoming expression, which was what she’d fully expected. But his eyes widened in astonishment.

 

 “You?” he asked, in the same drawling, deep voice as always.

 

“Yes, me,” she snapped.

 

“ _You’re_ my partner in this project?”

 

The scowl crept back over her face, and she made no attempt to hide it.

 

“Yes, I am. And I’m not any happier about it than you are.”

 

His face closed and hardened until he looked exactly the way he had four years before, on the day when she’d told him that she was leaving the wizarding world and could have nothing more to do with him, ever again.

 

“I’d hardly dared to hope for such a charming partner, Weasley. You’ve always been such a delight to… ah… work with.”

 

_Oh!_ Ginny shut her mouth, feeling her face turn red. Why couldn’t her partner have been someone besides Harry _or_ Malfoy? There were certainly more than two men in the wizarding world. Why couldn’t it have been Dean Thomas, or Colin? She supposed that she would already have known walking in that day if Colin were her partner, because he would have told her, so it wouldn’t have been a surprise. Colin was almost the only person she still knew from the wizarding world. A lot of it, she suspected, was because Colin’s mother, brother, and uncles had all died in the last battle. But then, they’d always been friends.

 

Or Luna? Or shy little Astoria Greengrass? Or, oh… anyone at all.

 

“I suppose it’s much too late to request a different partner,” Malfoy was muttering now from the other side of the desk.

 

“Yes, I think it is. Look, I don’t particularly want to work with you, but—"

 

 “You think I do?” snarled Draco.

 

She stepped backwards as if he’d tried to hit her. She shouldn’t have cared if he made it clear that he’d rather be partnering with anyone else; his words shouldn’t have been insulting. But they were.

 

“Are you backing out?” she asked.

 

Malfoy sighed so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d even heard the sound. “No,” he said in a clipped voice. “No, this project is much too important.”

 

“Look, what I was going to say was that we’ve got to find a way to make it work,” she said stiffly. “We don’t need to… to like each other. But we’ve got to work together. If it’s really half as important as Shacklebolt makes it out to be, then we’ve got to do it, if it even can be done.”

 

Draco turned away briefly, so that she couldn’t see his face, and then back towards her. He walked round the desk so that he was standing closer to her. Ginny wanted to shrink back, but forced herself to stay in place through an effort of will.

 

“Has he talked you into this as well?” he asked in a neutral voice.

 

“Yes,” admitted Ginny. “Do you honestly think it’s going to work?”

 

Draco shrugged. “It seems pretty bloody unlikely. I’ve never even heard of any magic that could transport us into an alternate reality, let alone allow us to influence events in it.”

 

“That’s what I thought as well,” said Ginny. “But… how much do you know about this thing?”

 

“It’s all pretty vague,” said Malfoy. “Shacklebolt essentially told me that the spirit of Thomas Riddle is threatening to rise again, and he’s somehow manipulated his incorporeal form so that he can’t be stopped in our… reality, I suppose. The only hope, according to the Minister, at least, is somehow traveling to an alternate version of our time and blocking Riddle there. Nothing much more specific, though.”

 

“That’s what he told me,” said Ginny. She drummed her fingers on the desk. “I have to be honest. It all sounds pretty dodgy to me as far as our chances of being able to accomplish anything. Or even getting there in the first place. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this successfully, or really even making a serious go at it. Time Turners and Pensieves are the closest things I can think of, but this… I just don’t know if there’s any real chance.”

 

Malfoy nodded. “I agree. But if there’s even a possibility that this is the only way to end the threat of Riddle, or Voldemort, or whatever name you choose-- then I’m in.” He studied her face. “What?”

 

“Nothing. I just…”

 

He raised an eyebrow. “You seem surprised.”

 

“No. It’s not that.” She was surprised to hear such direct words from him, but also glad. And since there was no way to express that mixed emotion without revealing much, much more than she wanted to, Ginny decided that changing the subject was the better part of valor.

 

“So who did you think your partner was going to be?” she asked.

 

He smiled, that familiar half-smile of his that could transform his face if he allowed it to widen just a bit further. “I really didn’t have the least idea. I hoped like hell that it wasn’t Potter, though.”

 

Ginny couldn’t help but laugh at that.

 

“So I’m not quite as dreadful as Potter would have been?” The smile flirted with a grin.

 

 “No, you’re not as bad as Harry,” Ginny admitted.

 

The brief silence that fell between them was almost friendly. Almost, thought Ginny.

 

“Why did you say yes to this project, Malfoy?” she asked.

 

He shrugged. “Oh, a variety of reasons, I suppose. Shacklebolt’s informed me that two children are at risk in this reality, and for whatever reason, we’re the only two who have any chance of rescuing them,” said Draco. “So… I said yes to his proposal.”

 

“That’s what got you to do it?” she asked.

 

“You sound so incredulous, Weasley—how flattering,” Malfoy said dryly.

 

“But why else?” Ginny pressed the issue without quite knowing why. “I can’t believe that’s the only reason. Is it?”

 

His face closed again. “My other reasons are my own.”

 

She scowled. Just when she thought he was exhibiting thirty seconds’ worth of decent behavior…

 

The office door opened again. Shacklebolt had returned, holding a small cauldron and a dark velvet bag.

 

“The time has come,” he said simply. “We must act quickly. Mr. Malfoy, Miss Weasley… Professor Bufflebuns.” The Minister gestured to the small, round man trailing behind him.

 

Ginny had to bite her tongue hard to keep the awful bubble of laughter in her throat from making its way to the surface. _Bufflebuns!_ She didn’t dare to look at Malfoy. He’d always had a way of sharing subtle jokes with her, of allowing just a bit of warmth and humor to slip through his cold façade, and she had a feeling it would be no different now.

 

“Yes, yes, very quickly _indeed_ ,” trilled Professor Bufflebuns, bouncing into the room. His multicolored robes swirled around him like a melting rainbow Ginny had once seen in a dream after sampling just a bit too much of a new Datura plant. “You both represent the _only_ hope of the wizarding world. And how lovely it is to _meet_ you!”

 

“I, ah, don’t believe I remember you from my own Hogwarts days,” said Malfoy.

 

“Professor Bufflebuns teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Shacklebolt.

 

_Oh dear_. Remembering the lack of job security for teachers in that specialty at Hogwarts, Ginny felt a twinge of pity for the elf-like man.

 

“Yes, _yes,_ for the past three years,” added Professor Bufflebuns. “Such a delightful topic.”

 

Ginny glanced at the little man with more respect. _He’s tougher than he looks,_ she thought.

 

“At any rate. _Tempis fugit_ , and all that, so we’d best get started,” said the professor. He began to set up the little cauldron and pour various liquids into it from a set of capped bottles. The atmosphere grew more serious, somehow, even with Mr. Bufflebuns still almost splitting his little fact in half with a grin.

 

“If I might trouble you, Minister, I have a few more questions,” said Draco Malfoy. Ginny noticed that the supercilious tone had completely left his voice. She decided that even if none of this plan worked, it was all worth it to hear Malfoy sounding completely serious for once.

 

“This is the final opportunity for any questions you may have, so I believe that you should ask them,” said Shacklebolt.

 

_Final opportunity,_ thought Ginny. _I don’t much care for the sound of that._

“Assuming that this does work, that is,” Malfoy went on, and Ginny thought again that he no longer sounded incredulous about the possibility. “Will… ah… Miss Weasley and I somehow experience the entire lives of these other people?”

 

“It’s impossible to be completely precise,” said Shacklebolt. “However, I believe that you’ll both experience only the most relevant parts over a brief period of time. Several days when both of you have important interacts in this reality, perhaps.”

 

“So this actually will be some sort of alternate reality? It’s not just an illusion?” asked Ginny dubiously.

 

Shacklebolt glanced at the professor. ”No, no,” said Bufflebuns as he measured a silver spoonful of glittering powder and tipped it into the cauldron.  “It’s all _quite_ real. The events are actually happening at the very same moment as in our world. It’s only… you know… not in the _dimension_ we experience. On an astral plane, and all that.” He waved a chubby hand vaguely. Smoke suddenly billowed from the cauldron, and he coughed, waving the hand more vigorously. “Don’t be—ahem—alarmed,” he said between coughs. “The potion’s coming along _quite_ well.”

 

It was all that Ginny could do to not trade glances with Malfoy. If she had harbored doubts about this project before, they were nothing compared to her feelings now. Or rather, her misgivings had shifted from the idea that any of this would work at all to the question of just how much might go wrong if it did succeed. But this Bufflebuns was more competent than he looked, she firmly told herself. Not that this standard was very high. He’d have to be, she thought, for him to be allowed through the front door at Hogwarts, much less teach there.

 

“You will inhabit those parallel lives,” said Shacklebolt, speaking a bit hurriedly, in Ginny’s opinion.

 

“For how long? I mean, could we actually be stuck staying there forever?” she asked.

 

“Oh, no, I shouldn’t worry about _that_ one bit,” said Bufflebuns, carefully pouring the dark, bubbling liquid from the cauldron into two small crystal goblets. “The underlying spells prevent the two realities from straying _too_ far out of phase, which is really _quite_ useful, when you think about it.”

 

“But what if we don’t finish… well, what we’re supposed to do… before we’re automatically brought back?” asked Ginny.

 

“The Minister has _such_ faith in the both of you,” said Bufflebuns, handing Ginny a goblet. “I trust his judgment i _mplicitly_. I don’t have the s _lightest_ doubt that you and Mr. Malfoy will succeed.”

 

“Ah… but what if we don’t? We haven’t really been given the most precise information,” said Malfoy.

 

“I do _so_ wish that were possible. Unfortunately, handling alternate but parallel realities can be a bit like predicting the future in crystal balls and tea leaves. The information’s there, no doubt about it, but as to its _precision…_ But there’s nothing to fear, nothing at all,” said the professor, pressing a goblet into the younger man’s hands.

 

 “I suppose we’ll need to keep the integrity of that other timeline,” Malfoy was saying now, in the voice that had always meant he was terrified of whatever was happening but determined not to show his fear. “So we shouldn’t reveal ourselves.”

 

“There will be no need to worry about exposure,” said Shacklebolt. “Your other selves will remember nothing, and know nothing, of the wizarding world.”

 

“Well, yes, at least we’re _reasonably_ certain that’s how this will work,” put in Professor Bufflebuns.

 

Ginny did catch the expression on Malfoy’s face then, and it left her torn between horror and laughter. She knew that it mirrored hers. _What the hell have we got ourselves into? Is there still time to back out? Maybe?_

_But that child… that second child, in that other reality… and that means that I’m in danger, too, and maybe even Malfoy, in some way that I can’t even begin to imagine._

“ I’m afraid that we do need to hurry this along; the spell will lose its potency quite soon. _Tempus est de essentia_ _s…. Essentium_ … 

… oh, I never really was terribly gifted at Latin, you know… Drink up, now!” Professor Bufflebuns beamed at them from a round, pink face, his blue eyes twinkling.

 

Ginny nerved herself, lifted the glass, and drained it in one gulp. _Ugh._ From the corner of one eye, she saw the Malfoy had done the same, and that he didn’t seem a bit more pleased with the taste. She thought of musty books and old cobwebs stirred into muddy water from the bottom of the Hogwarts lake.

 

“The spell should begin to act in only a few moments,” said Shacklebolt.

 

Ginny fidgeted. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder why both she and Draco Malfoy had been chosen. She knew that her own inclusion in the project was logically. She’d had that long-ago connection with the shade of Thomas Riddle, and it was a bond that unfortunately could never really be broken, no matter how desperately she’d tried to do so. But why was _Malfoy_ a part of this?

 

_I suppose I already know that,_ she thought. _I wouldn’t have thought that Shacklebolt and this Professor Bufflebuns would know, though. But then again, maybe it’s their business to keep track of things like that._ She shivered at the memory of what she knew, the things that Dr— _Malfoy_ had once whispered to her, the things that had happened when Voldemort was at Malfoy Manor for an entire summer, and Dr— _Malfoy!!—_ had found him there every time he went home for a holiday or a weekend. Hogwarts had begun allowing students to go home much more often, and every time he had done, Voldemort was there. And bit by bit, in little pieces, in hints, in confessions that she was never even sure Malfoy remembered later on, Ginny had heard so much of what happened—even though she’d always suspected that he had never told her the worst of it. Oh, yes, she knew all too well why Draco Malfoy was connected to Thomas Riddle, too--

 

The room suddenly wavered, then blurred, then began to run together like watercolors on parchment. She gripped at the table, and then she felt a hand in hers, oh, she remembered that hand so well, warm and strong, with long fingers, holding her, lending her the strength of its owner. She held to Draco Malfoy’s hand as hard as she could, even as she felt his fingers dissolving into nothingness along with the room. The memory of the last time those fingers had touched her skin… her mental defenses were down in that moment, so she wasn’t able to suppress the sensations as easily as she’d been able to do over the past four years. But it didn’t really matter in that moment. And somewhere up ahead, the slanting sunlight of a late summer evening, brighter and hotter than anywhere she had ever been, and the scent of fennel and sage in the air…

 

 

 

 

 

**Ori's Prompt (#1)**

 

**Basic premise:** Draco and Ginny Silicon Valley AU

 

**Must haves:** Ginny and Draco banters

 

**No-no's:** No D/G offspring, no Ginny being Draco's admin or secretary

 

**Rating range:** Any

 

**Bonus points:** Ginny takeover Draco's company

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ginny somehow manages to end up on I5 headed towards San Jose. Abandon all hope, ye who drive there at any time besides 3 am on Christmas (maybe!!)

_Last modified 8/28/18_

_Friday, July 1st, 2002_

_I-680 just past Santa Clara_

_Northern California_

+++

Ginny Weasley blinked.

She looked down at her hands. She was holding a steering wheel.

She looked up, through a car window. Scenery was rushing by at a frantic rate, far-off mountains, hills rising on either side, dry, dusty scrubland, shades of brown and tan with a few spots of green.

She sniffed deeply. The air coming in through the half-open car window was warm, and it smelled of fennel and sage.

She glanced swiftly to one side. The car seat next to her was empty, but she heard snoring and grumbling from the back. A large sign whizzed by.

_I-680 S. Exit 21A 5 Miles. Calaveras Rd/Dumberton Br._

For just a moment, the words made no sense to her at all.

For an instant, Ginny didn’t know where she was, what she was doing, or much of anything else.

Then a sleepy voice rose from behind her seat. “Gin?”

And the disorientation passed, vanishing like fog in a Portland morning after sunrise.

She was driving to California with her best friend, Colin Creevey. After six hundred miles, they were almost at their destination. This was really not a good time to fall asleep at the wheel. Now, of all times, she had to keep it together.

Maybe she should get Colin up and tell him it was his turn to drive…

No. They were too close.

Ginny reached up and swiped a straggling strand of hair where it stuck to her forehead. The air in the front seat of the van was hot and stuffy, and the fan wasn’t helping one bit. She didn’t dare to use the air conditioner. The temperature gauge always started to hover ominously close to red whenever she did. She knew that they needed to baby along the 1989 Honda Odyssey as long as possible. Maybe someday she’d own a vehicle from the new millennium, but her hopes weren’t high that it would be happening anytime soon.

In the back bench seat, Colin stirred again. “Are we—"

 “Don’t you dare ask if we are there yet,” Ginny said without turning her head round.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said in a voice that held a hint of a whine.

“After four hundred and twenty miles on I-5, I don’t even want to hear it,” she said.

“It does take a while to get all the way down here on the 5,” he admitted.

“Ugh, don’t say ‘ _the’_ 5\. That’s what the Cali people say. The ones who are invading Portland and ruining it.”

“But we’re going to be Cali people now, Gin,” Colin pointed out. He scrambled off the seat, forward, and sat back on his heels. “How long does it take to get residency? I think a year. After we’ve been living here for a year, we’ll officially be Calis.”

Ginny scowled. “Does that mean that we have to start saying that everything causes cancer? Oh, never mind! The point is, it’s _Interstate 5_. Anyway, we’re past it now.”

She knew that her own temper was getting short. It was a long haul down from Portland, and the further she got from the city that had been her home for such a long time, she more unsure she felt. With each passing mile, she’d grown more and more nervous about what she was really going to find. She couldn’t shake off the very real fear that nothing she found could ever measure up to all those years of dreams and childhood memories.

The whole thing still seemed so impossible. In a way, she couldn’t believe any of it. Couldn’t believe they had been driving for eight hundred miles, couldn’t believe she’d uprooted her Portland life and her tiny fledgling landscaping business. Couldn’t believe she’d received that letter and copy of the deed, that the opportunity had really come to do this and that she had really taken it.

That her childhood house of dreams was… would be… hers.

_LA la la la, LA la la la, LA la la la LA._

The ring of her Nokia cell phone broke into Ginny’s thoughts.

“Your phone’s ringing,” said Colin.

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know. My hearing’s really good, Colin. I never use power equipment without ear protection. Could you get it?”

“You’re not going to answer it?” He tried handing it to her.

“No, I’m not answering the phone! I’m trying to drive, in case you haven’t noticed.” Ginny sighed. She knew she was getting to the point where every tiny little thing irritated her beyond endurance.

“Here, it’s on speaker,” said Colin, still pushing the black phone at her.

“Hello?” shouted Ginny at the Nokia, finally giving up.

There was only silence. Then a crackling sound. Then the speaker went dead. The hairs went up on the back of Ginny’s neck, and she had no idea why.

“Could you look at the phone number, Col?”

He took the phone back from her. “408-555-1212,” he said. “Doesn’t look familiar. Do you still  know anybody here?”

Ginny shook her head. “No… I mean, not that I remember, but I haven’t been here in fifteen years. It’s a San Jose area code though.”

Colin shrugged. “Just a wrong number, then.”

“Yeah…” Ginny found herself shivering, even though the June evening was far from cold.

“I mean, what else could it be?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. You’re right.” Ginny resolved not to think about the strange call anymore.

She rubbed her nose and wished she had Sirius satellite radio in the van. The regular radio was iffy, and the only reliable station played oldies.

“L.A. is a great big freeway! Put a hundred down and buy a car… In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star… Do you know the way to San Jose,” sang Colin in his inglorious voice.

“I do not want to go to San Jose.” Ginny rolled her eyes. “I want to remember the way it was before Silicon Valley destroyed it.”

“You know, by 1988, a lot of tech was already there,” Colin pointed out. “Steve Jobs invented the Apple in his garage in 1977. It wasn’t exactly pristine ranchland.”

Ginny looked ahead at the highway sign and gave a long, tired sigh, her heart beginning to pound in a way that had nothing to do with the hot summer day or her exhaustion after two days of driving. They were getting very close now.

“I know, but it wasn’t as bad as it is now,” she finally said. “Oh, Col—what if Sunol isn’t the same either?” She forced the words past her lips, her greatest fear, really.

“I’m sure it’ll be the same,” said Colin. “And I’ll know right away. You’ve only described it to me about eighty thousand times.”

It was true. They’d met when they were both eight years old and she had been moved to Portland after the death of the family to stay with a distant uncle who was almost never around. He had sent enough money to support her, to pay for live-in babysitters and a nice Craftsman house near Reed College, but Ginny hadn’t seen her relative more than once a year at most, and sometimes less than that. She had no clear image of him. He was a shadowy figure in her childhood and teenaged years, and he hadn’t shown up at all since her seventeenth birthday. It had been a comfortable but lonely life.

Colin Creevey had lived next door to her home, and he’d heard her crying in the backyard, mourning her lost family and lost childhood in Sunol. They’d been friends ever since. They’d gone to grade school and high school together, they’d been in the same class at Portland State University, and they’d shared everything together. She’d been the first person he’d come out to; even in liberal Portland, he hadn’t been ready to tell anyone else yet. But he was closer to her than her own brother, Ron, who’d always been gruff and closed, who had moved to Southern California and was now a junior officer in the LAPD. And she was the sister that Colin had never had. When she’d found out that her old family house in Sunol was hers, incredibly, there had never been any question that he would come with her.

And now… now, they were almost here.

She took the second exit and turned onto Paloma. The evening shadows were lengthening now, and the streetlights flickered. Then Niles Canyon. The walls of the small canyon rose up around the road. That was still the same, anyway. Now Main Street, which had never run through the middle of Sunol but was on the east side. There were a few small buildings, a McDonald’s, a Dairy Queen. It didn’t look much different from the way it had when she was seven years old. She was avoiding central Sunol, the part that would be most likely to have changed, but she did not feel safe at all yet. She’d been so lucky so far, too lucky to believe, really. It couldn’t continue. They would turn left onto the final street and run right into a hideous mishmash of brand new condo monstrosities with a garish Starbucks on the ground floor.

“Do you think… do you think it’s all still there? Including the other house, I mean? That bigger one you always told me about?” asked Colin from somewhere in the back of the van.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ginny said immediately. He was tired, she was exhausted; there could be no other reason he’d bring that topic up when he knew she didn’t want him to. Not that she’d ever said in so many words, but he had to know.

But it was true that she’d told him about that much bigger house right next to her family’s small home. The other house. The one she would not think about….

The crickets chirped and trilled. _Kilkare Road._ There was the sign, hanging askew, as always. She turned right. She inched up the drive. Then she pulled up in front of the little house.

She got out of the car, hearing the ticking sound of the cooling engine.

Night was falling. It was just past nine o’clock, and even during the long days of summer, it would be dark soon. She saw the shape of the small, boxy house clearly, though. It had originally been built in the 1950’s as a hunting lodge, and some other houses were already being converted to larger buildings in 1988, the year she’d had to leave Sunol.

_Wait… that means it’s still here, it hasn’t been changed._

Her throat tightened. It was the same, oh, all the same!

The same shapes appeared in front of her, lingering in the glimmering dusk. The steps leading up to the front door. The picture window in front, the one that looked into the living room, and the window on the right that belonged to the front bedroom. The square boxy shape with a garage beneath. The huge eucalyptus tree in front. The fennel plants everywhere. She knew they weren’t native to the climate, knew that John Muir had stupidly introduced them to California almost a hundred years before and they’d become invasive, but oh, how she’d loved the sweet smell of that plant. Loved to pick up stems and chew on them as she ran through the tall summer grasses to the old oak tree.

Without thinking, her eyes followed that long-ago path that she hadn’t run since she was seven years old. And then the shape edged into the corner of her vision, no, the group of shapes, massive and blocky. And she knew what they were.

She didn’t really want to look, in a strange way. Suddenly, she wanted to grasp onto the memory from the past and keep it, because that could never change, never fade, never shift into something that she did not want it to be.

But like some version of Lot’s wife, she looked up, and knew that she would have done so even if the act of willed vision had turned her to a pillar of salt.

Ginny looked, and she saw.

A massive set of shapes loomed in the darkness. Sher looked. She saw that other house from the past at the top of the hill, from what seemed to be an even more distant and foggier past than fifteen years earlier.

_The house that spirits built._

The little boy had whispered that phrase to her, mouth to her ear, when they were both small children. That summer when she was seven years old. At least she thought so, even though she could never, ever quite be sure. Sometimes she was sure that she’d imagined the whole thing, especially the boy who had been her dream-playmate. Either way, she hadn’t known what it meant then, and she didn’t know now. But it looked like a house built by ghosts, that was for sure.

That house was dark, and silent, and it kept its secrets. It seemed too massive, suddenly, too real and too close. She shivered without knowing why, and she turned away.

“Come on,” said Colin, touching her arm and leading her back to the little house that had once belonged to her family.

The key she’d been sent turned in the lock. Slowly, Ginny opened the door. She had no idea what to expect. The entire interior could be a wreck, for all she knew. When she fumbled at the switch inside the front door, the overhead hanging lamp flared into life.

“Does it look the same?” asked Colin from behind her.

She walked into the small dining room, her eyes wide, drinking in everything she saw. “Yes,” she finally said.

It was the same, impossibly so. The tiny room with its breakfast nook and picture window. The built-in bookshelves… The connected living room, the fireplace… Even the table and couch and chairs looked like they might be the same pieces of furniture. To the left of the dining room was the miniature kitchen. Ginny walked into the room, wondering how her mother had ever managed to cook dinner without losing her mind or breaking every dish they owned. The window overlooking the side yard…

She turned to walk through the little corridor to her old bedroom. It was the same, a twin bed neatly made up with flowered sheets, a table, a desk, and the windows that looked out on the front and side. She touched the furniture as she walked around the room, feeling the worn surfaces, wondering if it was possible that it could actually be the same from when she was a child.

_Home_ , she thought _, I am here, I have come home._

“There’s water running in the bathroom,” Colin called from somewhere behind her. “And there’s another little bedroom back here. Everything seems to be working. Who do you think did all this?”

“I don’t know,” Ginny said absently. “I know… I need to find out a lot more about what’s going on here, but not after driving a bazillion miles.”

“I’m going to fall asleep and start sleepwalking if I don’t go to bed right now,” yawned Colin. “Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite, see you in the morning, Gin.”

She nodded and headed for her own tiny bedroom, changing into a ratty old sleep shirt and shorts.

Before she lay down in the small bed, she looked out the window by the side of the bed one last time. 

Then she froze.

There was a light in a window of the house at the top of the hill.

She couldn’t tell clearly from here which window it even was. But it was somewhere on the first floor, to the left side from where she was sitting on the bed.

_A room with old-fashioned wooden paneling, exquisitely carved molding, a Persian rug on the hardwood floor… red window draperies, a beautiful canopy bed, a huge standing mirror… and it all looked larger than life to her, because she saw it through a child’s eyes…_

Ginny jerked herself out of the fantasy, shocked at its strength. Except that it hadn’t been a fantasy, but… but a memory. She had actually been in that room.

She shook her head. Impossible.

_Why impossible, though?_ A voice whispered in her mind. She’d lived here for years when she was a child. She’d played with so many little kids who were always daring each other to go into abandoned houses and barns and sheds.

And then there was that blond little boy that her mind had always stubbornly insisted she remembered, from that summer she was seven years old and he was eight. She had never known for sure where he’d lived. But she’d always vaguely thought, that summer, that he was from the huge old house on the hill, although she’d never really seen him go in or out of it. He had always just been there, in the fields and the woods and the dusty roads near her family’s little house. Nobody else had ever been there at the same time; she’d never played with him with any of the other neighborhood children present. But maybe he’d brought her into the house at some point.

This boy’s face was more real than anyone else in her memory from that last year. Everyone else she’d known, the other children, the adults… they seemed so vague. But not the boy.

There was that slight problem that she’d never known if he was real or not, of course. She’d asked her brother Ron about the boy a time or two during the years since that summer, and he’d always said that he didn’t remember any blond kid from that summer, and why was she talking about it, anyway. Then he’d scowl at her and leave to run around with the boys from the neighborhood, the older, tougher ones who drove souped-up cars up and down 82nd  and Duke.

But if the little boy really had existed, and if he actually had lived in the house, it would have made sense for him to bring her up there at some point…

No, no, no, another, frightened voice insisted. You’ve never been in there. Never! And he probably wasn’t even real, you probably just imagined him. You can’t even remember his name. He probably never existed. That’s what Ron always said…

She shut her eyes at the unexpected vehemence of the thought. When she opened them again, the light from the big house was out. She stood looking at the vast vague shape of the buildings for a long time before falling into bed. It had been a long, hard, tense day, and she drifted off into sleep almost instantly.

She ran through the long grass hand in hand with the little blond boy, giggling. They stopped when they reached the stream. He flopped down in a patch of wildflowers, and she fell next to him.

“I like you better than anyone I know,” he whispered to her. She nodded. This was important somehow, although she didn’t know how or why.

The fall wildflowers waved in the breeze around them, a torrent of red and pink and yellow and white and blue. They were blooming again, now that the rains were starting to come back.

He gave her a red-orange poppy, his pale child’s face serious and grave. She caught her breath, looking at him.  Even through child’s eyes, she could somehow see how handsome he would one day be. The wild larkspur and lupines and anemones nodded above his head like a pagan crown.

“I will never forget you,” he said to her, as if making a vow.

Chill dread clutched at her heart. “Why would you forget?” she asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“But I am,” he said, as if to himself. “I don’t want to. But I am.”

Her mouth turned down. The sun was suddenly colder and more distant, and the smell of the flowers less sweet.

He took her hand in his own. “No, I will never forget,” he said, and this time, he was making a vow indeed.

But all Ginny knew was that he would soon leave her.

A roaring noise started to intrude into her consciousness, from outside the dream. Her rational mind stirred lightly, starting to wake. In those moments between dream and waking, she realized that she knew the boy’s name.

Dirk… Drake… something like that…

The noise revved. Ginny’s eyes popped open. She realized that she was hearing the vague roar of a car’s engine outside, much too close to her window. She opened her eyes and struggled to sit up, shaking away sleep. She turned to look out the front window in the bedroom to see a new model silvery Mercedes idling at the bottom of the hill.

She could just see a tall, slender male figure getting into the front seat and closing the door. He was a blur, because her contacts weren’t in yet, but there was something about his elegant, self-assured stance that set her teeth on edge. He was probably an arrogant yuppie from some brand-new condo building monstrosity all the way on the other end of Kilkare Road. As she watched, the sun flashed off his hair, as brilliant and silvery as his expensive car. But he was young, she could tell that from his quick, casual movements. Then the car drove away, and she sighed. The sun had barely risen, but she had a lot that she wanted to get done before she had to leave for San Jose. _Time to get up._

 “I am going to have to get a job. I can’t live off my looks alone,” announced Colin over breakfast.

“Oh, so am I. Can you imagine the property taxes here?” Ginny swallowed her bite of scrambled eggs. The fridge and cupboards had even been stocked, which she was grateful for.

“I really, really hope there’s not a Starbuck’s in Sunol, though,” Ginny went on, thinking of Colin’s last job. “No offence, but I mean… it’s never the same once the corporate coffee starts moving in.”

“None taken. I’ll ask around. The minute you get on 680, there’s probably one Starbucks every hundred yards all the way to San Jose.  Do you need the van today?”

“Well, I have to go to the Santa Clara County recorder’s office to see the original deed, I guess. Other than that, I don’t know,” sighed Ginny. “Col, I have to find out a lot more about how I actually was left the house. We just don’t know enough. We need more information.”

“True,” said Colin, propping his head on his hands and suddenly looking serious. “But that one lawyer said it looked okay.”

“Yeah, well…” Ginny rolled her eyes and didn’t elaborate on the thought. She’d already talked all the issues over with Colin so many times. About a month earlier, she had received a certified letter informing her that her uncle had transferred ownership of her childhood home to Ginny. A copy of a general warranty deed had been included, along with a set of keys. Ginny had written back to her uncle for further details without much hope of a reply, and she didn’t get one. Colin had been able to get her a free half-hour consultation with a lawyer who was the father of one of his college friends, but that was it. Ginny was told that everything seemed to be in order and she did own the house, but the lawyer had one eye on the clock the whole time and talked very fast. Considering that he was giving her his time for free as a favor, she understood why.

The lawyer had advised contacting a Portland title company and ordering a title search. Ginny had gone ahead and done it, far from happy at spending the two hundred dollars. No competing liens had been found. But it hadn’t left her much further ahead when it came to finding out what the hell was actually going on. Nobody had yet been able to find her great-uncle, for one thing.

“Hey, didn’t you always say that your family had a lawyer friend?” asked Colin.

Ginny rubbed her forehead. “I mean… I kind of remember a family friend who was a lawyer… I think… his name was Mr. Bufflebee, or something… that can’t be right. But that was fifteen years ago, Col.”

“Maybe you should try to find another lawyer here,” Colin said tentatively.

“Sure, with the billion dollars in savings I have,” said Ginny.

“I’ll lend you everything I have,” said Colin.

“That’s sweet, Col, but lawyers around here probably charge three hundred dollars an hour, so I would get about ninety seconds with one.” Suddenly impatient, Ginny pushed herself back from the table. “I seriously need to go outside.”

She walked outside and around the back of the house, looking out at the large tract of land behind and to one side. It abutted the land belonging to the much bigger house on the top of the hill, she remembered. But it was crazy, just how much property was considered to be a part of the small house. She really had a hard time believing that horrible upscale housing hadn’t been built there a decade before. She kept walking.

How far back did that land go? She wondered as she walked through a field of tall grasses. Where exactly was the dividing line between the properties? 

_Her child self had walked through this same weed field with the little boy, hand in sweaty hand. They were heading over towards the big oak trees… This is part of my house, he’d said. A small, chubby man beamed at them both from the back of the house._ God, but how real this memory seemed. If it really was a memory…

Ginny frowned. But if she was making up the entire thing, then why was she remembering that man too? _Mr. Bufflebom?… mom and dad’s friend… he had a big office in San Jose…_

Could that boy have been real? Standing on the land of her family’s home in Sunol, the very place where she remembered seeing the boy, there seemed no reason why that was impossible. The fact that Ron had always seemed almost angry whenever she brought up the hypothetical child almost might be further proof of his existence, if anything. Maybe Ron associated the little boy with their family’s death in the terrible car accident that only she and her brother had survived unharmed. Maybe Ron just didn’t want to remember anything at all about that last golden summer their family had lived in Sunol, and the way she’d kept bringing up the boy was a reminder.

And maybe…

Maybe there was something about remembering the little boy that frightened _her,_ quite apart from whatever reaction Ron might have.

But that certainly didn’t mean that he wasn’t real. And if she’d tried to forget him, as she now knew she always had, there seemed something cowardly about that. Ginny scowled as she began to walk through the trees at the edge of the Kilkare Woods. Few things made her angrier at herself than thinking that she might have acted like a coward at any point.

But she couldn’t really remember much of anything coherent about the boy, just the sharp, clear images of the times she’d been in his company. She remembered nothing about his parents, or seeing him with other children, or in any context that ever included adults. And she did remember all these things very clearly when it came to the other children who had been her friends when she was seven years old. . Then they had simply accepted each other’s company, as small children can do. But they’d been closer than all her other little friends in Sunol, somehow.

Ginny shook herself. She didn’t have time to go over all of it now, and that was for sure. It was ten o’clock. She needed to get to the Alameda county office of records to check the original deed. She silently thanked God that she wouldn’t have to fight morning rush hour traffic into Oakland, but she still needed to allow plenty of time to get there. Also, she had no idea how long the process might take, and she did not want to get stuck in afternoon rush hour on the way back. She had a feeling that it probably started around two-thirty at the best of times, and on the Friday before the 4th of July, God only knew. So she had ample time to do what she planned to do next, but not unlimited time, and she knew that she’d better get started.

She walked through the copse of trees and then turned round and surveyed the property. Yes, it was really the same, or at least it looked that way.  She might have dismissed her impression from the night before as only illusion born of tiredness and hundreds of miles of driving, but it was real, all right. Both then and now. And she hadn’t been able to see any of the property in the dark, really. She’d never truly realized just how large it was. She scanned the boundaries. Eight acres easily, and a nice square shape, so it seemed even larger than it was. Well, that was if the boundaries between her property and the huge house at the top of the hill actually were what she remembered them to be.

So much space…

Dreams ran through her head.

She could run a nursery from here. Suppliers could come to her, and she could travel into Livermore and Pleasanton. Of course, ugh, there was no avoiding the San Jose market, and if she’d have to drive through Silicon Valley all the time... Hiding in a cave for the rest of her life might be preferable.

_But I wouldn’t need to do it every day,_ she thought. _I could spend most of my time here, in the new nursery._

The land was perfect, plenty of space with two streams on the property itself. That was often the biggest problem of all in this area for a nursery, she knew—the question of finding a reliable water supply. And it was so unusual, almost unique, to have this much land so close to Silicon Valley or the Bay area. She stood on the back steps of the tiny house, staring out over the fields of grass. _I can do it,_ she thought. _I really can. I can grow plants, I can hire people, I can start a business… and it would cost… oh, dear God, it would cost…_

Ginny gave a heavy sigh. It always came back to the question of money. The letter had also included a bank draft for a thousand dollars, which had seemed an enormous amount. But staring out over her land, the dollars shrank with each passing moment. It was zero cash compared to what she’d need to start a nursery. The greenhouses and equipment alone could cost more than ten thousand dollars. No bank would give her that kind of a business loan in a gazillion years unless she put up the house as collateral. And she and Colin would need to get jobs right away just to be able to afford to pay property taxes and everyday bills.

_But maybe if I start really small… people do have backyard nurseries._

There was another option, of course. She could sell some of the land for development.

It would be easy to do, and she could get enough to make a great start on the business that way. Of course, she’d learned just enough about tax law to know what a dangerous idea that could be. If she lived in the house and on the land, then her great-uncle was the one who had to pay the gift taxes on it. But if she sold any part of it, then the tax bill would come to her. And the taxes would be based on the difference between what the land was worth when her great-uncle had originally bought it and its appraised value now. Ginny shuddered. She had no idea when he’d first bought this property, but she had a very hazy memory of her mother once saying that it had happened in the mid 1960’s or early 1970’s. Ginny knew enough about the explosion in value in California land to guess just how much of an increase that would be. It had probably cost about five thousand dollars then. The price now would be in six figures—and probably in the upper end of that range.

_But that isn’t the real reason to keep the land together, is it?_ She looked out at the creek, the wind whipping her hair. Of course it wasn’t the reason. If she made hundreds of thousands of dollars on subdividing and selling some land, then a twenty percent tax bill would still leave her with plenty. The idea made a lot of sense. Most people would probably say she was crazy not to do it.

She closed her eyes and smelled the bittersweet complex scent of Sunol in the summer, the sage, the fennel, the wildflowers, the baked soil.

_I would rather drop a bomb on it_ , she thought. _No. This land stays together. I don’t care how crazy it is. I won’t sell one square inch._

She walked slowly around the house to the front, then stepped out into the dusty little road. Ginny forced herself to tilt her head up and look at the huge house at the top of the hill.

The complex of buildings was there, all right. What she’d seen the night before had almost seemed like a dream, an illusion born of too much driving and not enough sleep. But the house was real. In the sunny light of day, she was sure about that. It was huge, composed of rambling buildings and gardens and dry fountains. She walked up the drive and turned the curve to see it more clearly. Yes, it was the same. The strange mixture of Queen Anne, Victorian, and California Mission styles, the fountain in front, the deep veranda, the turrets on top. It looked just a bit shabby, the white paint a little faded, a few shingles loose, but someone had clearly been taking care of it in the last fifteen years.

She realized that she had been afraid that this house was gone. In a way, she’d been more afraid of that disappearance, because she knew that her own old family house was still there. It had to be. But she hadn’t set foot in Sunol or heard anything about what had happened to the town since she was seven years old. She’d been sure that this monster house had to be either torn down for condos or turned into a tourist attraction with people tromping all over it and taking pictures, like the Winchester house in San Jose that it resembled.

But it hadn’t changed one bit. Not from what she could see.

Ginny walked around one side, not sure if she should set foot on the property or not. It wasn’t hers, and she had no idea who owned it now. She wanted to see if she remembered how the side of the house looked. Yes, there was a tall cedar fence, exactly as she remembered.

And there was a small door set into the wall, just as before. The little blond boy had opened that door when he saw her coming towards him…

She stared, remembering, or trying to remember, trying to shape the fuzziness cradling the memory into the same clarity as the memory itself.

_LA la la la, LA la la la, LA la la la LA._

Ginny started and then pulled the phone out of her pocket. Mr. Bufflebuns must be confirming the appointment, or maybe canceling it, or God knew what. She glanced at the number as she raised the phone towards her ear, and a chill ran over her skin.

504-555-1212.

It was the same number she’d seen when her cell phone had been ringing the night before. When she’d turned the speaker on and only heard a somehow ominous silence.

She forced herself to speak.

“Hello? Who is this?”

A slight pause. Then a strange male voice spoke, one that had a cold and creaking quality. It had an accent she couldn’t quite place.

“Miss Weasley?”

“Yes, this is Ginny Weasley.”

“Ah, yes, I’m glad to reach you,” the voice went on, not sounding as if its owner were capable of ever being glad about anything. “My name is Peter Dinkins, and I represent Mr. Thomas Riddle.”

It was as if a full bag of ice had been emptied down Ginny’s back. That name. There was something about that name. She had no idea why, but the very words seemed to carry fear and menace in them. “What’s this about?” she snapped, shoving courage into her voice.

“Mr. Riddle wishes to discuss a matter of real estate boundaries with you,” said the voice.

“What do you mean?” asked Ginny guardedly. Oh, this did not sound good at all.

“Ah, it’s a matter best discussed in person. He would like to arrange a meeting.”

“Would you just tell me what this is all about?” demanded Ginny.

“There’s no need to become upset,” said the voice. “You’ve recently taken possession of the Sunol property at 2824 Kilkare Road, correct?”

“Yes, but—how did you know?”

“Well, that’s the property under discussion,” the voice went on as if this Peter Dinkins hadn’t heard her question at all. “It’s simply a question of correct boundaries and ownership. One that needs to be resolved.”

Ginny clutched at the phone. “What do you mean, ‘boundaries’? ‘Ownership’? And resolved—how?”

Mr. Dinkins gave a patient, long-suffering sigh. “Very well. According to certain documents in Mr. Riddle’s possession, the boundaries between 2824 and 2826 Kilkare Road are… ah… incorrectly drawn.  Less than half an acre actually belongs to the smaller property.”

“Only… _what?”_ Ginny found herself leaning against the cedar fence, struggling not to collapse. “That’s just wrong. It’s eight acres. I know it is. I saw the deed!”

“I’m afraid that the original deed is incorrect. Mr. Riddle is in possession of an older document which clearly shows the correct boundaries.”

“That’s impossible,” said Ginny. “No. I talked to a title appraisal place in Oregon, they said they weren’t any liens on it.”

“Apparently, they were incorrect.”

Ginny’s chest seemed to be rising into her throat. “ I have the proof,” she managed to say,  “and this Thomas Riddle is wrong!”

 “Really, Miss Weasley, there’s no need to become upset. I’m sure that this problem can be settled… ah… amicably. Mr. Riddle is the actual owner of the larger 2826 Kilkare Road property, you see, and he simply wants the land question settled so that it can be properly developed.”

_This Thomas Riddle is the owner… and that car driving down from the top of the hill this morning…  it wasn’t from some theoretical set of condos on the other end of the road. It was from the big house, and it belongs to whoever lives there… which is Mr. Riddle!_

In a flash, Ginny was sure that she saw it all.

The silver Mercedes she’d seen that morning hadn’t been coming from _some_ theoretical set of condos on the other end of the road. It came from the big house at the top of the hill, and it belonged to whoever lived there… which was Mr. Riddle. _He_ was the man she’d seen driving the car, that arrogant blond who’d hesitated much too long in front of her house.  He was the one who wanted to steal her land now, and who was apparently so sure that he’d get it without a fight. And the worst part of all was that he planned to use it for development, to throw up crappy expensive condos that would sell to a bunch of moronic yuppies just as arrogant as he himself clearly was.

_No_ , thought Ginny. _No, not if I have to burn down the entire town. He won’t get away with this._

“If this Mr. Riddle thinks he’s just going to take the land, he has no idea how wrong he is,” said Ginny.

“Oh, I believe you’ll see that he’s quite right about his ownership of the property,” said Peter Dinkins.

“Oh hell no I think he’ll see that he isn’t!”

“I’m sure it can all be settled quickly,” he went on, in a horribly self-satisfied voice that made Ginny want to reach through the cell phone tower waves and punch him.

 “We’ll just see about that!” yelled Ginny.

“Yes, I suppose we will.” The voice on the other end of the line paused. “What? I wouldn’t recommend—well, if you insist—”

A second voice spoke.  It was low and soft and persuasive, with a strange accent she couldn’t place. “Ah, Miss Weasley. I’m so glad to have the opportunity of speaking with you.”

Each word seemed to wrap itself around her mind in a soothing tendril of sound. Ginny fought the pull as hard as she could. “Who’s this?” she asked in a harsh voice.

“I’m Thomas Riddle. And I’m sure that between us, we can work this problem out.”

“I’m sure we can’t!” How alluring that voice was. How seductive. Ginny clutched the phone and leaned against the fence.

“Could you come in to speak with me today in, say, an hour or so?  My office is located at 525 S. Winchester Boulevard in San Jose.”

The voice had an unendurable power. If she listened for one more moment, she would do anything it said.

Ginny hurled the phone across the yard.

“Hey!” yelled Colin, dodging the missile. “Why are you throwing your phone at me?”

“Sorry,” Ginny said sheepishly.

He bent and picked it up off the ground. “You almost broke the screen. You really shouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t mean to. I just—ugh.”

“You really should control your temper, Gin,” advised Colin.

“I know,” she sighed.

“What was that even about?”

Ginny thought quickly. If she told Colin, he would just start worrying. He’d probably talk about nothing else for days. And he’d correctly point out that she _should_ have made an appointment to talk to this Thomas Riddle rather than violently hanging up. What she’d done had made no sense.  She just couldn’t face any of that at the moment.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“I know it’s not nothing. I can always tell when you’re upset, Gin.”

“Yeah, just—” She ran a hand through her hair, realizing too late that she was making it stand on end and that it wasn’t going to be a good look. “Not right now, okay?”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here's the third chapter, yay!

 

“Okay, I won’t ask you about it now,” said Colin, with the air of someone making an enormous sacrifice. “Because I’m really, really good at shutting up when someone needs me to shut up. I always shut up right away.”

Ginny snorted but felt a bit comforted. An idea struck her. “Col, I think I’m going to go to the Alameda registrar’s office right now. I’ll look at the deed and make sure it’s okay.”

“You really should try to find a lawyer, Gin,” he said. “I’m going to start a job right away. We could afford a really cheap one.”

“There aren’t any really cheap ones.”

“Pro bono, maybe? Does Stanford have a legal program?”

“I don’t know. I just want to look up the deed. I don’t know when I’ll be coming back though. Will you be okay on your own?”

“Yes, Gin, I can feed and dress myself,” said Colin. “Will I ever find out the answer to this big mystery?”

“You totally will.” Ginny put her hand on his arm. “Let me go check on the deed first, and then we’ll talk. I promise, I’ll tell you everything.” Not that she’d been telling him much so far, she thought guiltily.

“Have fun,” said Colin as she got into the van. “Good luck finding a parking space in Oakland.”

“I think the county registrar would have a parking lot,” said Ginny. “Anyway—I could use the luck, Col. Think good thoughts for me.”

As Ginny pulled out onto Kilkare Road, she thought that she’d need all the good wishes she could get. What had just happened with this Thomas Riddle was so inexplicable, so frightening, even beyond the idea that he actually might have any claim to the land. She couldn’t define why, and she found that she didn’t want to.

 _I really do need to find a lawyer_ …

 Vague feelings chased each other through her mind, impressions, half-memories, and through all of them, the smooth sinister voice of Thomas Riddle.

The traffic flowed smoothly. Rush hour was over. The day was bright and pleasantly warm, the air filled with the scent of sage and fennel. Everything was going great until Ginny realized that she was driving on 680, going south.

“What?” she muttered. “How did this happen?”

She should have turned onto 580 at Dublin, going west. This was exactly the wrong way. And…

She glanced down at the dashboard clock. It was eleven.

The last time she’d looked had only been a second or two before, or so she thought. And it had been ten-thirty.

She had lost time.

Just like those days when she was a child, after the car accident, after most of her family had died and she was sent to Portland. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the crying jags… and the lost time.

Ginny took a deep, shaky breath. She would turn around and get back on 680 north, that was all. She’d head towards Oakland, and then….

And then, she was driving down Winchester Boulevard, and a complex of drab office buildings that matched the address Thomas Riddle had given her was coming up on the right. She pulled into the parking lot, marching up to a side door.

_All right. Maybe I’m meant to be here. Maybe this is even a good idea, talking to this Thomas Riddle. Probably should’ve gone to the county records office first, but… it didn’t work out that way. Maybe I need to just go with it._

Ginny wasn’t exactly sure where the right office was, but there was a list in the foyer, and she scanned it.

“-2824 Kilkare Road.”

She froze. The voice was coming from behind her. She craned her neck around, and she saw an office halfway down the hall with a slightly open door.

“And 2826 Kilkare Road.”

A pause, during which she realized that she heard a male voice—and that it sounded familiar. It was different from anyone she actually knew, though, lower, deeper, more drawling. Whoever this man was, he had a quality to his voice that sounded familiar. It wasn’t an accent, but it was a precise, clipped sound that belonged to people who had enjoyed a privileged upbringing. She’d heard something like it before, and it always belonged to one of the rich kids from Lake Oswego or Mount Tabor.

But this voice… did it actually sound a bit like the voice of Thomas Riddle? There was no way to be sure. She hadn’t spoken to him long enough on the phone. But it was at least possible…

Ginny turned round and crept along the wall as quietly as she could. She peered into the office through the crack in the door.

A young man with brilliantly blond hair was leaning against an expensive desk and talking into a phone. His lean face was set into a far-from-pleasant expression that made his features look pointy and sharp.

“I don’t especially care _what_ anyone said.” His voice was almost venomous now. “That property belongs to me. And if you think— Hello? Hello?”

He scowled at the phone before slamming it down into the receiver, and then he leaned down and put his hands on the desk, breathing hard, clearly trying to bring his temper under control.

He was the man she’d briefly seen that morning. She knew it. His voice was at least similar to the voice she’d heard on the phone. And that meant he was, had to be, Thomas Riddle—the man who was trying to steal her home away from her. He must have been talking to whoever actually owned the Kilkare mansion. True, he wasn’t what she’d thought Thomas Riddle would look like, not at all. And she couldn’t really be sure that the voice was the same. But he’d just finished saying the two addresses. It had to be him.

AAs rage shot through Ginny, she was completely sure that she’d figured the situation out correctly. Without thinking, she opened the door so hard that it bounced off the opposite wall.

Still, there was a chance that she might have kept her temper, she realized later. If the man she was sure was Thomas Riddle hadn’t shot her a cold, appraising look and spoken in the most clipped, dismissive tones imaginable.

“And who are you?”

Common sense fled her mind completely.

“The person who actually owns that house and land on Kilkare Road!” she all but snarled.

“Really.” His eyebrows swooped together in the center of his forehead. He had darker eyebrows than she would have expected from his hair, an ash-blond that perfectly set off his pale face, not that she was noticing anything like that, of course.

“Yes, really,” said Ginny.

“Then maybe you could explain a thing or two,” he said.

“Oh, I’d be happy to.” She marched into the office and had just enough presence of mind to close the door behind her. “Except there’s not anything to explain. That house is mine. I have the deed. You don’t own it. End of story.”

“Oh, is that so?” He raised an eyebrow in a way that made her set her teeth. “You’re wrong. I have the documentation to prove it.”

“We’ll just see about that!”

“Yes, we will.”

“Do you think I don’t know why you want it?”

“Enlighten me.”

Ginny didn’t have the clearest of theories, which made her angrier still. “Because… because I’ll bet you tear it down. Just like you probably go around tearing down every building that’s been in existence for more than five minutes and then put up condos that cost a trillion dollars apiece! You are not getting this house… Mr. Riddle.”

He gave her a strange look. “ _What_?”

“Mr. Thomas Riddle. I figured out who you were right away. Don’t think I didn’t.”

He leaned back against the filing cabinet and began to laugh.

“I don’t see anything funny here,” Ginny said stiffly.

He held up a large hand. “Wait. You mean that you actually thought I was Thomas Riddle?”

“Well—aren’t you?” faltered Ginny. She was starting to get a very bad feeling about all of this.

He shook his head. “No. I’m not. But at first I thought _you_ were Mr. Riddle’s secretary. Administrative assistant, sorry. You know what I mean.”

“You really thought I… but you’re saying you’re not…”” Ginny spluttered. She could feel the first waves of shame starting to crash over her.”

“Oh God. I have never felt so dumb in my entire life,” she announced to her feet.

“ Look—I don’t blame you,” the man went on in his drawling voice. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything either. I supposed I should have guessed as soon as you said the house and land were yours. But I thought that his office had sent over someone else to convince me. This Peter Dinkins certainly wasn’t managing it.”

Ginny’s head jerked up. “Did you say Peter Dinkins?”

He cocked his blond head to one side. “Yes, that’s who I was talking to. He said that Thomas Riddle—never mind, you probably don’t want to know about any of that, so it’s not important to you, but yes, I was talking to Peter Dinkins.”

Ginny could feel her knees starting to get weak. “What’s going on?”

“I certainly don’t know, but it seems you understand more than I do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t at all, but… ugh. It’s a long story. But basically, I live at 2824 Kilkare Road. It’s my family’s house. I finally got it from my great-uncle—well, he’s always been called that, but I think my mother said he was actually some kind of cousin. And Peter Dinkins said that Thomas Riddle said that it didn’t really belong to me, so… um,” she finished lamely.

He was staring at her intently now, as if trying to look right through her into some secret she held without even knowing it. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ginny Weasley.”

His stare intensified. “I’m Draco Malfoy.”

She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Draco Malfoy. She knew that name. But it was unusual enough that she could be pretty sure she didn’t know anyone who had it. So she couldn’t possibly know it. He looked completely familiar all at once, this Draco--  no, no, she had no idea who he was at all, she’d met him for the first time fifteen minutes ago. She could not stop looking at his lean, angular face.  She was unmoored and disconnected, out of time, out of place, Draco Malfoy’s face the one constant anchoring her to earth.

 _I know you_ , she thought, even though she knew she couldn’t know him at all.

_I’m going insane, that’s all. I lost at least half an hour this morning, I drove the exact opposite of the way I wanted to go… oh, what’s wrong with me!_

 “I have to go,” she said, pushing herself away from the desk where she’d been facing him. “I’m so sorry. I’ve acted like a total moron. But I have to go.”

“You weren’t thinking of going over to Thomas Riddle’s office, were you?” He looked at her closely, and she shrank back from the scrutiny of those bright gray eyes. “Ginny. Don’t.”

When he said her name, it was too much, and she had to get out of there, as surely as she had to take the next breath of air. “I mean it, I have to go,” she blurted, and she almost ran out the door.

Thomas Riddle’s office was in the very next building. There was no assistant at the front desk. She walked through the front foyer and started down a dim little hall. _How do I know exactly where to go_ , she wondered, but she kept walking. The dark wooden door loomed up in front of her. Thomas P. Riddle, the brass nameplate read. She heard a faint rustling within, and she knew he was there. Her hand reached out for the brass doorknob as if moving in a dream.

“Did you see where she went?”

Draco Malfoy’s voice broke in from the corridor outside the office.

 _He’s looking for me_ , she realized, and with that realization, the spell was broken. Footsteps were moving down the corridor in another direction, and she fled the office without looking back.

Ginny sat in her car for a long time, sipping iced coffee from a Starbuck’s in the lobby, wishing she could beat a hasty retreat back to her new home in Sunol, the one that was dearer to her than ever.  But she couldn’t; she had to go to Oakland and find the original deed. She had an awful, sick, sinking feeling in her stomach when she thought about what Peter Dinkins had said that morning, what that Thomas Riddle had assumed—that she had no real right to the house and land, and that they did. And she was furious with herself for somehow driving to San Jose to see him, which she now admitted was what she’d meant to do all along. Yet she hadn’t meant to do it. She’d just… found herself heading south on 680.

She dug for another packet of Splenda in her purse; the coffee wasn’t quite sweet enough. Her hand brushed across a folded paper. She pulled it out to see one of the copies she’d made of the deed. She didn’t even remember bringing it, but she must have had some idea of showing it to this Thomas Riddle.

She sighed slurped the last of the coffee, shaking it up and down to try to extract a little more liquid from the ice cubes. Whether she was actually going nuts or not, one thing was very clear.

“I absolutely have to find a lawyer,” she said aloud.

But Ginny already knew that she couldn’t possibly afford to pay for any lawyer, much less one who would have an office in Silicon Valley.

_Maybe I should call Colin, see what he thinks… no, what can he do? Leave it until I know more. At least this way, only one of us has to be paralyzed with existential dread. And there’s got to be a way to find out more information that doesn’t cost three hundred dollars an hour. Maybe I should just go to the county records office right now… traffic shouldn’t be too horrible yet…_

A tap came at her window. She rolled it down without thinking.

It was Draco Malfoy, of course. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Nice to see you again, too,” he said. “Did you try to find Thomas Riddle? You did, didn’t you?”

“What do you care if I did?” she countered.

He sighed. “He’s just… look, I don’t really know him; I’ve just heard unpleasant things about him, and I don’t trust him at all. I wouldn’t have trusted him even before he started to take my house, I mean—”

“ _Your_ house?”

He nodded.

She goggled at him, feeling dumber than ever.  Of course she should have known that the rambling estate was his. She’d seen him drive down the hill that morning, and she’d certainly heard him on the phone saying that specific address to Peter Dinkins. She hadn’t wanted to know for some reason. That reason lurked just outside her mind. She refused to let it in.

_This Draco Malfoy must really be convinced I’m a MacArthur Genius Award winner by now._

“Do you want to come back into the building?” he asked. “It’s very warm out in this parking lot, and you haven’t turned on the air conditioning.”

They had reached a certain turning point, she realized. She could either turn him away and set out for Oakland, and that would be the end of it. Or she could go back with him and learn more than she knew now. He was a mystery that she could at least begin to solve. The idea of that solution frightened her. But there was nothing that Ginny Weasley hated more than feeling like a coward.

She opened the door and got out.

 “Okay, I’ll walk back in with you,” she said cautiously. 

“So you’re looking for a lawyer?“ he asked as they started to walk.

She looked at him suspiciously. “Um… no. I have one. And I’m supposed to meet my lawyer at noon,” she lied. “He’s in this office complex somewhere.”

“Really? Does this lawyer know anything about real estate law?” Draco’s tone of voice made it unflatteringly clear that he thought she’d probably called a number on a daytime informercial full of ambulance chasers. _If he even believes me in the first place._

“Yes,” Ginny said recklessly. “And by the way, why exactly do you think you own the house? I mean, I’m sure this Thomas Riddle doesn’t, but how did you get it? Did you buy it for development?”

Some hint of feeling seemed flash across Draco’s face, but then he gave her an arrogant smirk.

“So you think that’s my evil plan for the Kilkare Mansion?”

“I still think that’s probably what you do. Buying priceless old buildings and then tearing them down to build horrible new condos. Or maybe office space.” Sparring with him made it a lot easier to deal with these confusing, inexplicable feelings he stirred up in her. But it was also a little frightening in itself, because they seemed to fall into it so easily, so naturally.

They kept walking down a long corridor that linked two of the office buildings, and he looked at her as if he was trying to decide whether or not to keep teasing her. “No, I’m not that evil. I do real estate restoration. And I’m not tearing down the house, you can bet on that.”

Ginny raised her eyebrows, not sure whether or not she should feel relieved yet. After all, he still might have plans to turn the mansion into the California Starbucks Headquarters or something. He’d obviously picked it up at a bargain price and was going to do something with it. He’d hardly let the massive home sit empty—not to mention the land attached to it. The mansion must have even more acreage than her house did. Such a big tract of empty land was so precious this close to Silicon Valley, so rare. God only knew how much it was worth.

Another question came to her mind, although it was one she didn’t want to ask. He looked her own age, maybe a year or so older. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five. So how exactly had he come by enough money to get involved in that kind of business, not to mention having a nice office in an incredibly expensive area? Of course, she was sure she knew the answer as soon as the question rose in her mind. This Draco Malfoy had to be from a rich family, which she’d already figured out, and to be rich in this area was to be wealthy indeed. They were undoubtedly financing his business ventures. He could start an underwater basket weaving school, and they’d probably be just as happy to finance that.

He stopped walking beside her, and after a second, she stopped too. They’d reached a central atrium where sunlight spilled down through the glass skylights up above. “Can you find your way from here, Ginny?” he asked.

“Um… yes,” she said.

“Good.”

Draco didn’t move. Neither did she. The minutes were ticking down to noon, which was when she was supposed to meet this mythical lawyer. She had to go. But she didn’t want to, and she did not know why. She wanted to stay near him, to try to unravel the mystery of why she seemed to know him. And perhaps, to find out if he felt the same way.

The thought terrified her.

“Well, bye,” she said briskly.

He shook his head, as if awakening from a dream. “Ah…”

It couldn’t just end here between them, thought Ginny, not like this. They were about to walk away from each other, with no real reason why they should ever see each other again—unless she happened to glimpse him leaving the Kilkare mansion in his Mercedes some morning. And there was no reason for that to happen, really. He’d obviously bought the place to speculate on it in some way, not to live there.

It couldn’t just end like this…

“You don’t really have a lawyer, do you?” asked Draco.

Pride stiffened her spine.

Oh yes, whatever this weird thing between them really was, it could, should, and would end right now!

That having been firmly decided, her feet didn’t seem to want to move. She shoved her toes in the opposite direction through sheer force of will. Then she felt the lightest touch on her shoulder, seeming to burn her skin through her blouse. Draco’s hand.

 “Listen, Ginny. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“Please, don’t touch me,” she somehow managed to say.

“Sorry.” He removed his hand immediately. The expression on his faced seemed to say that he was a bit concerned she might file a sexual harassment suit the second she did find a lawyer.

“It’s fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Never mind.”  She prayed that he couldn’t see anything of what that brief brush of the hand had done to her. His touch had stirred something terrifying in her. She had wanted him gone; she had wanted him to never stop touching her; the two desires warred so fiercely that she knew she had to put them aside for the moment. Think about them later—or not at all

He was standing much too close to her. Of course, she suspected that if she was actually in the county recorder’s office in Oakland and he stayed on the spot, he still might be standing too close to her. “Look, I was on my way to the Alameda county recorder’s office to find the original deed. I’ll just do that. And then—”

“I thought you were planning to see your lawyer at noon,” said Draco, clearly suppressing laughter.

“Ugh,” said Ginny, resisting the urge to cover her face with her hands. “Okay, I was lying. I don’t have a lawyer. Are you happy now?”

“Not yet,” said Draco, lowering his voice even further until it shaded into dark velvet.

Brief pictures of what Draco Malfoy would look like if he were happy flashed through her mind—as well as the kind of activities that might make him that way. She shoved them all down.

“Meet with my lawyer, and I’ll be happy,” he said.

“What?” she stared at him.

“You’ve obviously got trouble of your own going with Thomas Riddle,” said Draco. “You need to speak to a lawyer. Take a few minutes with mine.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Just a few minutes. I was on my way to see him anyway.”

“I…”

Then one corner of his mouth quirked up in an almost-smile, and she agreed.

 “I’ll pay you back for this lawyer’s time,” she promised recklessly.

If he gave her an insufferable smile, or loftily told her that she couldn’t afford the fee for stepping over the doorjamb into his lawyer’s office, she would turn and leave, she decided. But he just started walking, so she followed him, trying and failing to not notice how gracefully he moved. How fit his lean body looked under his white cotton shirt, which looked like it had been sewn onto him.

How nice his butt was, under those charcoal gray pants…

Ginny scowled and decided that she really needed to find where she’d packed the Hitachi Magic Wand. They’d brought only a few boxes of things, but she knew she hadn’t forgotten that.  And that she could use it tonight.

His lawyer’s office was in the next building, and the door was halfway open. The brass nameplate on the door read _Mr. Bufflebuns, Attorney at Law_. _I really do know that name,_ Ginny realized.

And when the door swung open all the way, revealing the small, chubby man sitting behind a desk, she realized that she knew him, too.

He turned round, and his baby-blue eyes lit up. “Ginny Weasley!” he said delightedly, in the enthusiastic voice she now realized she remembered. “I’m _so_ glad to see you here.”

 _But not_ surprised _to see me_ , she thought. Again, she was almost frightened at the feeling of events clicking into place, moving behind the scenes without her knowledge and volition, and yet all affecting her.

“How do I know you?” she asked, almost afraid of the answer.

His eyes twinkled. “I remember what a _charming_ child you were. And I knew your family very well indeed.” As always, he had a vague English accent, as if he’d lived in California for so long that it had been worn down.

Draco was staring at them both. “What’s going on?”

“Why, I knew Ms. Weasley’s family in the past,” said Mr. Bufflebuns. “And I’ve always had a feeling that she’d return to this area.”

Draco stared at her in confusion, and perhaps another emotion lurked behind those silvery gray eyes too, she thought. Whatever it was, it probably matched her own.

“And I’ve got a distinct feeling that you need my help,” said Mr. Bufflebuns to Ginny. She nodded, trying not to feel like events were spiraling out of her control.

“Yes,” she said. “This Thomas Riddle is trying to take my house, too. I mean, I just want to talk about it. Maybe I could just get a little bit of advice,” she added hastily.

“But of course,” said the lawyer. “You want to save your childhood home.”

Yes, she did. Ginny fought down a lump in her throat, as well as a vague feeling that this really wasn’t how these things were supposed to work. But she couldn’t turn down any help at this point, and that was the cold, hard fact. 

Mr. Bufflebuns ushered them both to chairs at a long table in the next room. “So I’m going to hazard a guess,” he said. “The two of you have decided to join forces for a common goal, seeing as how Thomas Riddle is making an attempt to take both your properties.”

“Well… we’re thinking about doing that,” Ginny said cautiously.

The lawyer adjusted his rimless glasses on his nose. “Perhaps you could tell me exactly what’s been going on,” he said.

Ginny had meant to give a brief, stiff answer, but the whole story poured out of her. From the mysterious letter and deed she’d received to the strange phone call that morning, she told him everything, acutely aware of Draco’s eyes on her the entire time.

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Bufflebuns when she stopped for breath. “Very interesting. And you say that the title assessor in Portland told you there were no other liens on the property?”

Ginny nodded.  


“Well, Mr. Malfoy’s situation—do I have your permission to share details with Miss Weasley, by the way?” the lawyer asked Draco, who nodded.

“Mr. Malfoy’s situation is quite similar,” Mr. Bufflebuns continued. “An apparently clear deed to 2826 Kilkare Road. A lack of any competing liens. The original deed at the Alameda county registrar’s office is in compliance—have you checked that yet?”

“No,” admitted Ginny. “I was going to today.”

“And so you should, but my instinctive feeling is that you’ll find you are in the same situation,” said Mr. Bufflebuns.

“I have a copy of the deed,” Ginny said tentatively. “The one that was sent to me a month ago.” She pulled the copy out of the purse and handed it to the lawyer, who scanned it.

“Hmm,” he said at last. “I’d need more time for a detailed analysis, of course, but from what I can see, it appears to be quite in order. Yet Thomas Riddle apparently has a duplicate deed for 2826 Kilkare Road, and that original deed is also quite correct. My suspicion is that this situation is the same.”

“That’s kind of what his secretary said, Peter Dinkins,” said Ginny.

“It’s a complex situation, to say the least,” said Mr. Bufflebuns. “They may also claim adverse possession. Peter Dinkins claims that he or some other representative has lived in at least one of the houses off and on for several years.”

If he’d somehow managed to get hold of a set of keys, it was believable, thought Ginny. Her great-uncle struck her as the type of person who might not visit one of his properties for years on end, so he might never have found out. Not that she’d ever gotten to know him well enough to understand his character. She couldn’t even call to mind a clear image of his appearance.

“Is that why I found the electricity and the water on last night?” asked Ginny. “There was even food in the fridge.”

“He states that he hasn’t been in either house for several months, so who can say. It’s quite a complex situation.  Of course…” He tapped his chin pensively. “There may well be a third original deed in Mr. Malfoy’s case, at least, one that hasn’t yet been found.”

“Why would there be a third deed?” Ginny asked dubiously.

“There’s a long-standing story that a copy may be located in a hidden location in the Kilkare Mansion,” said Mr. Bufflebuns. “As an original document, it might be dated earlier than any of the others. In fact, I’ve been speaking to Mr. Malfoy about arranging a thorough search in a week or so.”

“You mean you already looked and you couldn’t find it?” asked Ginny.

“Oh, yes. And if Peter Dinkins really does have any standing to claim adverse possession of either house as a representative for Mr. Riddle, then I imagine he’s searched as well—and I’ll be adding a charge for criminal trespass, by the way. But the Kilkare mansion is similar to the Winchester House in San Jose—no accurate blueprints exist for either structure, and there may well be rooms that no-one has ever found. Of course, it’s only a story, and there may well be no substance to it at all. At any rate, only the California courts could ultimately decide which deed is genuine in both cases, assuming that yours is the same as Mr. Malfoy’s. Although this sort of case so rarely goes all the way to trial; it’s nearly always settles out of court. I should warn you, though, that they can drag on for quite some time.”

 _Oh God,_ thought Ginny. _Months… years…_ A really awful thought struck her.

“What if I can’t stay in the house while a court case is going on?” she blurted.

“I shouldn’t worry about that just yet,” said Mr. Bufflebuns—not quite answering her question, she noticed. “The main thing is to continue the legal process.”

 _Here it comes,_ thought Ginny. _This is when he tells me that he charges a thousand dollars a minute._ “I don’t—um…”

“There’s no need to come to any decision just now,” said Mr. Bufflebuns. “I should advise you to enjoy your 4th of July weekend, and get back in touch with me on Tuesday. And thank you so much, Mr. Malfoy, for reintroducing me to Ms. Weasley.”

He began straightening some papers, and there didn’t seem to be much to do at the moment except to get up, so Ginny did.

As she was headed out the door, Draco behind her, Mr. Bufflebuns cleared his throat. “Ah, there is just one more thing. If Thomas Riddle calls you personally and attempts any sort of conversation, I would advise you to tell him pleasantly but firmly that you will only speak through legal counsel. And I also advise that you retain such counsel soon, whether myself or someone else. But in my considered opinion, I do not believe that you ought to speak with Thomas Riddle. He’s tried contacting Mr. Malfoy several times already.”

Draco started, and a guilty look flashed across his face. Ginny thought that he’d probably been told not to speak to Thomas Riddle or anyone connected with the man, but had been unable to resist. She’d certainly heard an example earlier that day.

“Yes, I would advise refusing conversation with him,” Mr. Bufflebuns went on.

“I won’t talk to him,” said Ginny. “I guess if he wants to see me, I should say the same thing.”

“I doubt that would occur,” said Mr. Bufflebuns. “No-one ever sees him.”

“What?” asked Ginny. “Seriously?” A thought struck Ginny. “So you’ve talked to Thomas Riddle, Mr. Bufflebuns. But have you ever seen him?”

 “I’ve never seen him. Nobody I know has seen him. Apparently, as far as can be told, nobody at _all_ has ever seen him,” said the lawyer.

Ginny shivered, and she did not know why.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and bookmarkers! Reviews are also MUCH appreciated. 😊


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers! In the interests of TOTAL historical accuracy… Yes, this fic is set in 2002, and most people weren’t advertising online for landscaping/gardening yet. But Craigslist has actually been around since 1995 and was started in the Bay area. There were some ads.

 

She walked out, Draco by her side. “Thanks for bringing me,” she said awkwardly.

“You’re welcome.”

“You barely said anything the entire time,” Ginny said after a few more silent moments of walking.

He shrugged. “Mr. Bufflebuns already knows the details of my case.”

“Right.” _Or maybe it’s that you didn’t want me to know anything about any of it._

“You can come back on Tuesday, if you like, and speak with him again,” said Draco. “I’ll be on a business trip.”

She took a deep breath, and said what she knew she must say, and what she didn’t want to say. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“You don’t think what’s going to work?” He raised an eyebrow. “I told you, don’t worry about it. I have him on retainer.”

_Oh great, another reminder that the Malfoy family probably has more money than God._

“This lawyer let me in for free today—maybe because of you, maybe partly because he used to be my family’s friend. He felt sorry for me. But I can’t afford to actually pay Mr. Bufflebuns a zillion dollars an hour, or whatever he charges,” Ginny said flatly.

“I’ve retained him to look after my own interests. You’ll continue to be my guest.”

 “I don’t want to owe you anything,” said Ginny through gritted teeth.

Draco looked at her face closely.  “Yes. I can see that you don’t like the idea of being in my debt.”

But he stopped there. Ginny clenched her fists. He hadn’t said that he wanted her there because she had something to offer, that they needed to join forces, that she might bring information to the table that he didn’t have. He was offering her charity. Nothing more.

The corridor came out at a small side foyer, and they stood alone. Ginny stopped and turned to face Draco.

“All right, here’s the deal,” she said. “I’m not taking free favors from you.”

He scowled. “What are you talking about? This isn’t—”

“Oh yes it is, if you’re letting me talk to your lawyer for free because you feel sorry for me, or something.” She looked at him narrowly as a new thought struck her. “Or maybe because you expect me to do something for you. I think you know what I mean!”

“I didn’t say—”

“Because if you’re thinking that, then you can just forget it right now.” Just in case he wasn’t planning to trade free legal advice for sex, she decided not to spell anything out. But the idea might make sense. After all, she was now the girl next door whenever he happened to stop by his property in Sunol. If he wanted a quickie on his way to or from San Jose, she’d be convenient and available. A lot like a drive-through Starbucks, in fact. She could be his triple latte with nonfat milk and three Splendas. _Ooh!_ Before she could really work herself into an irritated rage, he spoke again.

“Yes, I know what you mean, and believe me, I’m not thinking it.” Draco stopped short, but Ginny was sure she could almost hear the rest of what he’d wanted to say. _I have dozens of incredibly experienced and sophisticated girlfriends at my disposal, and they all practice exotic sexual techniques, wear Manolos, and carry Kate Spade handbags. Why would I be interested in a girl who drives a 1989 Honda Odyssey and has callused hands?_

Ginny struggled not to blush. Maybe the light in the hallway was dim enough so that he couldn’t see her face clearly. “Okay. But maybe I can offer you something that you really need right now.” She rushed on, just in case there was any chance that he’d misinterpret her words anyway. She didn’t need to hear an even clearer refusal from him.

 “This Thomas Riddle is trying to take both our properties. I can’t stop him alone. But you haven’t been able to do it yet either, even with Mr. Bufflebuns. Maybe… maybe we can do it together. If I’m going to do that, though, you’ve got to tell me everything that he’s been doing to you.”

A strange expression crossed Draco’s face. He raised an eyebrow and put on a sarcastic look, as if to cover whatever emotion had almost come through. She flushed. She could just hear what he was going to say next. Why would he treat her like an equal partner in this thing, he’d brought her to see his lawyer only because he felt sorry for her, sure, he’d do it again for God only knew what reason.

But that was all there was to it. He’d chosen her to be the object of his charity for some unknown reason; he’d made it unflatteringly clear that sex was not the draw. He didn’t need her or anyone else. He had money and status and she was a nobody. Of course he wouldn’t treat her as an equal. What good could she possibly do him? The smartest thing, Ginny knew, would be to keep her mouth shut and scoop up whatever scraps of charity Draco Malfoy was throwing her for whatever reason.

She also knew that she wouldn’t do it. Her pride would only permit her to have all or nothing.

“I mean, yes, you’d be doing me a favor, even so,” she said quickly. “But I could help you, even while you’re helping me. And I think you do need me. If you could solve this problem all by yourself, you already would’ve by now. Daddy’s money would have gotten you out of it right away, or something.”

“My father’s dead,” he said quietly. “My mother too.”

Waves of burning shame crashed across Ginny’s face. She could never say another word. She moved away blindly, felt for the door for the parking lot, desperate to get out of there, sure she was the biggest fool on the planet.”

She felt his hand on her wrist. “Stop,” he said. “You didn’t know.”

She stiffened, and he let his fingers fall. Draco sighed and gave her a long look.

“Look, Ginny, I agree with you.”

“You do?” She tried not to let her voice rise to the squeaky register it always reached when she was flustered. Just the touch of his hand on her wrist had been enough to do it. “Okay. I’m listening,” she added, when he didn’t immediately go on.

“I’m not really getting anywhere by myself, and Mr. Bufflebuns is the best there is. I don’t want this to go to the courts. It could drag on forever. I want to have that house now without any restrictions on it—and no, it’s not because I want to develop it.”

“So… you want to restore it? That’s really what you do, in your business, I mean?” she asked. Her mind worked rapidly. Maybe he was thinking of turning the mansion and grounds into a historic site. If his family was, had been, as rich as she suspected, then he could afford to do it with some government grants thrown in. That wasn’t exactly ideal, but it was a whole lot better than tearing all the buildings down and replacing them with condos or office space.

“Yes. And Thomas Riddle is trying to put a stop to it. He’s also trying to take your property.”

“You know a lot more about the details of what’s going on with me than I do when it comes to your story,” said Ginny. She looked at him levelly. “I have to know more.”

Draco nodded. “I’m sorry that I haven’t told you anything yet.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s just—don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But I get the feeling that you don’t apologize for much.”

He smiled faintly, an expression that shifted the planes of his face so that they were handsome rather than sharp and pointy. “You’re probably right about that. So it’s agreed?”

“What’s agreed?” asked Ginny, still hypnotized by that smile of his.

“We have a common goal, and we’ll work together.”

“Agreed.”

They shook hands, and the contact was brief enough that Ginny could pretend it hadn’t affected her at all.

Draco’s cell phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket and peered at it. “I have an appointment right now,” said Draco. “I’m going to be late, actually. Ginny, we’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll call you. All right?”

 “Okay,” she said, punching her number into his phone. “Um… bye.”

She went out to the parking lot and sat in her van for several minutes, remembering the way the light had shone off his bright hair as he walked away. Then she shook herself and started the engine. If she left now, she might still avoid the early holiday weekend rush hour.

Ginny plodded up the drive to her house three hours later, the afternoon sun slanting across the front porch. She’d gone to the county records office in Oakland, which she was regretting now. The traffic was okay on 580 on the way in, but then she’d been stuck in a never-ending line of people trying to get copies of their records during the last two hours before the fourth of July weekend began. Traffic on the way back was at a near-standstill almost the entire way.

She slowly walked up the familiar front steps, savoring the silence, the restfulness, and the soothing sun and heat. At that moment, she didn’t care if she ever got in a car again.

The house was quiet and felt welcoming, as if it had been waiting for her. _This is my home,_ she thought, dropping her keys and purse on the breakfast table. _Nobody can ever take this from me. I don’t care what anyone tries to do. It is mine forever._

Colin had left a note explaining that he’d found a Starbucks a few miles outside of Sunol and had been hired on the spot because someone had just quit. They’d needed someone to cover the three to eleven shift, so he had stayed.

“Glad things are working out for somebody, anyway,” muttered Ginny, folding the note.

She made a tuna sandwich and then sat and ate it, thinking. There was so much she didn’t know, all the way from where her great-uncle was, to why he’d sent her the deed now, to why Thomas Riddle was filing claims on both Kilkare Road properties, to who had set up electricity and water, to pretty much everything else. If what Mr. Bufflebuns had said was true and no representatives of Thomas Riddle had been there for several months, that last point made even less sense.  it didn’t feel like there had been intruders here, and certainly not as if they have left any mark. This house was _hers._ She felt it.

She spread out the copy of the original deed from the records office and compared it to the copy she had received. They looked exactly the same. She wasn’t surprised; she’d had a strangely sure feeling all along that Mr. Bufflebuns was right.  The original deed showed the same thing as the copy her great-uncle had sent her—that she was the only person who had a right to this property. Whatever claim this Thomas Riddle thought he had on both her house and the Kilkare Mansion, it wouldn’t rest on anything as simple as an incorrect duplicate deed.

Well, there was nothing more to be done about it that night. Ginny unpacked all the boxes, hung clothes in the closets, stacked books on the bookshelves, and did, in fact, put her Hitachi wand in a box under the bed. Then she watched an old rerun of _Little House on the Prairie_ on the small TV, resolving to order cable as soon as she could afford it. Which might be never, she thought glumly. Colin’s salary at Starbucks wasn’t going to support the household, and she somehow didn’t think she’d be making much more money with any job she got. _And if we can’t stay in the house because of all this crap going on…_

She set her jaw. _No. No, I won’t think that way. This house is mine, this land is mine, and I will never give them up. And maybe… maybe Draco Malfoy really can help me to keep them, and I can help him._

As the evening sun began to set, she found herself yawning. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, but she was exhausted. Between the driving, the excitement followed by immediate bad news, the stress, and everything else, she could barely keep her eyes open. She washed her face and brushed her teeth in the same tiny bathroom she remembered, loving every memory of each tile in the shower and pattern on the floor, and then she went to bed.

+++

She was sitting in a huge canopy bed, the dark mahogany ceiling overhead, deep blood-red curtains pulled tightly around the enclosed space. And she was not alone. A boy sat next to her, cross-legged, facing her. She felt her heart thumping in her own chest, and then in his, as they leaned closer and closer to each other. He raised his hand to her face, stroked her cheek, and pulled her to him.

And then, before she could process anything, before she could even try to figure out where she was or what was happening to her, they kissed.

At the touch of his lips, a wave of warm weakness rushed over her. She would have fallen onto the bed if he hadn’t held her up. But his other arm went round her waist, and then he was holding her up and deepening the kiss. Ginny suddenly knew a bit more about the history of the girl whose skin she inhabited, just a few things, as if transmitted through the boy’s skin. She was herself in some way… and yet, she was not.

The dream-Ginny was only sixteen years old. She had kissed other boys before, and she’d gone just a bit further with a couple of them. But she’d never felt anything like the feelings this boy stirred in her.

It was an experience, a reliving, and a memory all at once. The dream-Ginny’s upbringing was very strict, she somehow vaguely knew. Very 1950’s-ish. She’d been taught to hold herself aloof from boys until she had a wedding ring on her finger. So at sixteen, she was inexperienced in this reality-- as she’d been in her own, actually. But this Ginny was overwhelmed by a raw craving every time this Draco touched her, which the real sixteen-year-old Ginny hadn’t felt for anyone. The younger girl was a virgin; she desperately wanted him to change that. But she’d held herself back with all the strength she had.

And this other-Ginny was getting very tired of it. The floodgates were going to fall. She had the feeling that other-Ginny had come there for more than just a few hours, and that somewhere near the end of that time, she’d give up, give in to Draco’s desires and her own. And that the act would open doors that could never be closed again.

Ginny felt it all in that kiss, the kiss she certainly hadn’t shared with the real Draco, the one she barely knew and had only met that day.

As the kiss deepened, so did Ginny’s own awareness. The two of them were alone in his rooms, which she somehow knew were isolated in their own wing. Nobody could possibly overhear them. Nobody could find them. His family couldn’t throw her out; her family couldn’t rescue her, as they would see it. She was utterly alone with Draco Malfoy, and she could give in to him, to her own desires, and fall as far as she liked.

She woke up gasping. As she tossed and turned, she knew one inescapable truth.

If the real Draco Malfoy came over the next day and asked her for the same thing the dream-Draco wanted from that other-Ginny, she’d give it to him without a second thought. And she wasn’t a woman who did that kind of thing. She’d never, ever gotten into bed with a man she barely knew. She’d rarely gone to bed with a man she _did_ know. But for Draco, she would change it all—if he wanted the same thing.

She thought briefly of pulling out the Hitachi from under the bed, but Colin was probably back by then and asleep in the other room. Sometimes, the nuclear apocalypse wouldn’t wake up, but he could also be a surprisingly light sleeper. The house was silent, and the Hitachi made a lot of noise. It probably wouldn’t help anyway. She felt a bone-deep yearning that had very little to do with satisfying a purely physical need.

It took Ginny a long time to get back to sleep.

She rummaged in one kitchen drawer after another the next morning, searching for coffee. She found a can of dried-up Folgers that didn’t even move when she shook it. Grimacing, she decided to wait until Colin got up. He’d probably brought some Starbucks coffee back with him, and she’d unpacked the coffee grinder last night.

She walked slowly round the small kitchen, savoring each detail. The shabby cupboards with their chipped white paint. The battered enamel stove. The countertops, covered in formica boomerangs. The old-fashioned avocado green fridge. It was all exactly the way she remembered it from that summer she was seven years old. She walked to the small window at one end and looked out at the narrow side yard filled with fennel plants and tall grasses. Nobody had been taking very good care of the lawn, that was for sure. The south wing of the Kilkare mansion was only a few hundred yards away, looming up past the cedar fence. Every window was closed and barred from view by dark emerald green drapes, but she kept watching for movement.

Not that there was much point; why would Draco Malfoy even be there? She believed now that he did plan to restore the house some way, for some purpose; she’d been determined to somehow stop him if he actually was planning to raze it to the ground for development. Throw herself in front of a bulldozer, or something. But that meant that he’d have no reason to actually stay anywhere on the property. He undoubtedly owned some fancy condo in San Jose.

But then, why had she seen him driving down from the mansion the morning before?

Ginny turned and walked slowly into the front room. The two envelopes containing the copies of the deed were stacked on the table, and she looked at them, thinking.

Mr. Bufflebuns had said that a third version of the original deed to the Kilkare mansion just might be somewhere in huge house itself. There were so many strange parallels between her and Draco Malfoy’s situations. What if there were a copy of _her_ deed, too, somewhere in her own house?

Even if it was possible, that idea didn’t provide much guidance as to exactly where that hypothetical deed might be. But she and Ron had always had a few hiding places around the house, niches where they stashed little childhood treasures. Ginny thought that she could remember where they’d been, too. There was one under a floorboard…

After quite a bit of searching, Ginny found the loose floorboard near the side door that led out to a grass field. It came up easily, but it was empty, which she supposed should not have been a surprise. But there was something a little strange. Ginny frowned. There was a draft coming up through the underfloor beneath the loose board, which didn’t make much sense. The house was on a slab foundation with no basement, and the garage was a separate building. There shouldn’t be any open space that could hold moving air.

“What are you doing?” yawned Colin, padding in from the second bedroom.

Ginny jerked her head up, startled, and hit it on the bottom of a desk. “Ow! Nothing. Just… looking at an old hiding place I used to have, with Ron.” She rubbed her head, standing up.

Colin was pawing through the envelopes on the table, and she realized too late that she should have put them away. “What are these?”

“Just copies of the deed,” she said evasively. “How’s that new job?”

“It’s great,” enthused Colin. “I can’t believe I found it right away. It’s a drivethrough on an exit just a few miles out on 680, and they’re twenty-four hour, so I can pick up all kinds of extra shifts. I’m going to work a lot over the next couple days. I might practically never be here through the fourth.”

“Good,” she said, sidling past him. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t want you to be here, Col, but you can pick up some extra money.”

“I know! You know, Gin, because we won’t have to pay any rent or anything, maybe you can even take a little more time to get a job now. Maybe try to set up your gardening business again. I know the climate’s different, but you still know almost all the plants. Oh, I’m so glad that we don’t have to pay rent or a mortgage. It’s like a dream come true!”

The louder and happier Colin got, the guiltier Ginny felt—and the more determined to keep the unpleasant twist in the situation hidden from her best friend as long as possible.

“Did you bring back any coffee?” she asked as she walked swiftly past him to the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly a necessary question, seeing as how she could smell the freshly ground beans brewing.

“It’s just the way you like it,” called Colin from the front room. “It has the density of a black hole.”

Ginny poured the pitch black coffee into a mug and then brought it into the bathroom, showering and dressing in old clothes hurriedly. Colin was talking on the phone when she walked out in tattered jeans and a torn t-shirt. She waggled her fingers at him; he nodded at her, and she kept moving. As she made it out the front door, she wondered how much longer she could keep the truth from Colin. He was bound to figure it all out at some point.

The sun was bright and clear, edging towards mid-morning; she could tell that it would be a hot day later on. She walked slowly towards the side yard, thinking that she might spend the entire day sketching out the eight acres and making preliminary notes on how the imaginary nursery could be laid out. Maybe she could start putting ads for gardening services on Craigslist. She’d had very good luck with that in Portland. It was a technique that might not work if they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, but in a techy area, enough people read Craigslist to pick up clients. She’d brought all the hand tools, and she could afford to pick up a few new pieces of power equipment, if she actually had at least a small customer base.

The wind blew in Ginny’s hair and the sun caressed her cheek as if bestowing their blessings on her plans.

“It’s going to work out,” she whispered. “This house is mine, this land is mine, and nobody can take them from me.”

Her cell phone buzzed in the pocket of her jeans.

 _Draco! He said he’d call._ She snatched the phone out.

“Hello?” _Ugh. My voice sounds all breathy._

“Ah. Miss Weasley,” said an all-too familiar voice.

“Thomas Riddle,” she said, faintly.

“How pleasant that you recognize me so quickly,” said Riddle. “That bodes well for our future… ah… business relationship, don’t you think?”

“We aren’t going to have any kind of relationship, business or—or otherwise.” Ginny was breathing so hard that she could barely speak. “You shouldn’t call me.”

“I don’t see why not,” the smooth, rich, dark voice went on. “These tiny real estate troubles ought to be settled between the interested parties. It’s so much easier, don’t you agree?”

“No, I don’t agree!” That statement gave her something to grab onto, at least. “And my lawyer said that you shouldn’t call me, and I shouldn’t talk to you if you do!”

“Ah, Mr. Bufflebuns. Such a delightful man.”

“How did you know?” Ginny clutched the phone harder, then cursed herself. She was giving too much away with every word she spoke. “I’m hanging up this phone right now.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so, or I doubt you would have announced your intention,” the voice went on, sounding horribly pleasant. “No, if you’d rather not discuss our silly little disagreements over property—”

“Silly! There’s nothing silly about this. You’re trying to take something that’s mine, and it’s not going to work, that’s all.” _I’m hanging up this phone, I’m hanging up this phone,_ Ginny chanted to herself. She did not.

“Then there are several other… ah… interesting pieces of information I could share with you, if you’d rather.” Thomas Riddle went on as if he hadn’t heard.

“I don’t want to know anything you could have to say,” Ginny said fiercely.

“Can you be so very sure?”

“Yes! Yes, I can. And you’d better leave me alone, Thomas Riddle, or I’ll—”

A hand snatched the phone from her. A furious face intruded into her field of vision.

“Give me that!” Draco said. Unnecessarily so, because he already had her phone.

“Give that _back_ ,” gasped Ginny, but it was too late.

“Now you listen to me, Riddle,” Draco was snarling into the phone, holding it away from her as she made a few unsuccessful grabs. “You’d better stop harassing Ginny Weasley right now. And you’d better stop trying that trick with me, too. If you think I’m joking, you are sadly mistaken—”

“Draco, dear boy, you really oughtn’t to allow yourself to become so upset over a simple conversation,” the voice of Thomas Riddle chided. Ginny realized that Draco must have accidentally hit the speaker button. She could hear every word. In fact, the speaker on her phone had never sounded so loud before.

Draco’s eyes widened. The expression on his face shifted to something that Ginny never would have imagined she’d see there. Anger, yes, but fear too, and a certain type of fear, something irrational, something unadult… the young man looked bizarrely like a small child. Yes, that was it.

“Don’t call me that,” he said in a faint voice.

“Yes, of course, just as you wish,’ the oily, dark voice went on.

“Leave me alone. Don’t call me again, and don’t call her again.”

“You certainly are protective of Miss Weasley, aren’t you?” Thomas Riddle asked, sounding amused. “You’ve made friends with her rather quickly, considering that the two you met… ahem… only this morning.”

How the hell did he know that? Ginny wondered. She wasn’t going to ask.

“Don’t you dare to say a single word about Ginny!”

“Ah, Draco, so volatile. So belligerent. Your father would be most disappointed in you.”

Draco’s eyes widened. A chill struck Ginny, watching the fear spread across his face.

“Don’t you say a single word about my father either, Riddle.”

“Such a tragedy. I’ve always wanted to express my sympathy, you know.”

Draco was breathing very hard now. “You know nothing. You understand nothing. You… you…”

“Just as you say,” agreed Thomas Riddle, and then the line went dead.

Ginny stared at Draco, unable to look away from the naked emotion on his face.

“AHA!” screeched Colin from behind her. He marched up to them and planted his hands on his hips, glaring from one face to the next. “I knew it! I _knew_ there was something wrong.”

“There’s nothing… I don’t know why you think…” Ginny couldn’t even put a complete sentence together.

“Don’t give me that crap. I heard the _entire_ thing. Someone named Thomas Riddle is trying to take the house. And him!” Colin whirled round on Draco, stabbing a finger in his face. “You’re connected. I just know it. That’s the guy who was in the car that morning. The one you pointed out, Gin. Isn’t it? I recognize that hair. And that car! He’s here to try to take the house to develop it, isn’t he? He’s going to build condos! A plague of yuppies will descend on us!”

Ginny could barely hold back awful laughter. Colin was echoing pretty much everything she’d said about Draco only the day before.

“And, and,” Colin said wildly, obviously winding up to a dramatic finish, “you didn’t tell me _anything_ about _any_ of this!”

“ _Why_ do you think I didn’t tell you?” Ginny threw her hands up in the air. “I knew you’d throw a psycho kitty diva fit. And sure enough, you are.”

“I’ve got a good reason. And if you think you’re going to take Ginny’s house…” Colin shot Draco a death glare. “I’ll chase you out of here with a chainsaw.”

“He’s not trying to take the house,” sighed Ginny. Whatever Draco else was or wasn’t doing, she was long past thinking he had any designs on her property. “Yes. There are some… issues with this Thomas Riddle person. I don’t know exactly what’s going on yet, so I didn’t even know how much to tell, and Col, I didn’t want you to worry. But it’s okay _. He’s_ okay.” She jerked a thumb at Draco. “This is Draco Malfoy, and he’s in the same mess we are; Thomas Riddle is trying to take his house too. But we’re going to work it out. We have a lawyer. Oh… I’ll explain everything later, okay?”

Colin squinted at her and Draco, as if seeing the situation in a different light. “Oh. Okay.”

“Is this your... ah… partner?” asked Draco, speaking the first words since Colin had stormed up to them.

“Yes. No. I mean, we’re friends,” said Ginny quickly.

“Best friends,” Colin assured Draco. “Ginny’s the most important person in my life since I had to leave my boyfriend in Portland. Yes, I had a really serious _boyfriend_ back home.”

Ginny had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Colin did have a habit of laying it on a little thick at time.

“I mean, not that we were going to get married or anything,” Colin went on. “We could have a domestic partnership, but we couldn’t get married anyway. I think Oregon will be one of the first states to legalize gay marriage. Don’t you?”

“I think he gets the picture, Col,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

“Okay. Well, then… bye! I picked up another shift today. I’ll be back around seven. And you’d better explain everything then, Gin.”

“I will. I promise.”

 Colin gave Ginny a wink and went back towards the house.

As soon as Ginny heard the door shut, she turned on Draco. “What did you think you were doing?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He still looked shaken and pale, and she suppressed a surge of emotion.

“Oh, I think you do. The way you grabbed the phone right out of my hand! You didn’t have any right to do that.”

He scowled. “I was trying to help you, Ginny. Did you really want to talk to Thomas Riddle? You’ve got to know what a terrible idea it is.”

“I don’t need your help,” she retorted.

“Fine, then I won’t give it!”

“You probably weren’t going to anyway,” said Ginny. “You don’t strike me as being very reliable.”

His silvery eyes narrowed. “I could say the same about you. I could never trust you.”

“Well, I couldn’t trust you!” Ginny yelled.

They stared at each other. She realized what she’d said, and she could tell that he did too. They were talking as if they’d known each other for a long time, as if promises and betrayals pulsed between them. But they’d only met this morning.

Hadn’t they?

The knowledge hung between them, poised right on the edge of her mind, and on his as well, she could tell. If either of them said a word, then the deeper truth would come out. Ginny could not say that word. Yet she couldn’t leave it unsaid. She could only stare at Draco Malfoy, knowing, in some place she could not admit, exactly who he was. Had been.

But if she didn’t speak, she would be a coward. And Ginny would die before taking the coward’s way out.

“You…” she whispered. She licked her dry lips. “You were the little boy who lived next door in Sunol when I was seven years old, that summer of 1988. Weren’t you?”

Draco looked at her long and steadily, as if memorizing each current feature of her face and fitting it to a pattern from the past. “And you were the little girl with the long red hair.”

They each gave a long, shuddering sigh.

Somehow, they were both leaning against the cedar fence, and they stood very, very close, but it was all right. They leaned their heads together, as if sharing secrets.

“When did you figure out who I really was?” asked Draco.

“I think I knew the first time I saw you,” Ginny admitted. “But there was no way I was going to admit it to myself. What about you?”

He cocked his head, clearly thinking. “The minute you threw the door of my office open and it banged off the opposite wall. I wasn’t in a good mood, you know. I was ready to tell you to fuck off and then call security. But then… then, I saw your face, and I knew. But at the same time, I didn’t know until just now.”

“Same here,” said Ginny.

An awkward silence fell between them. A thousand questions chased themselves through her mind. What had happened that summer? Why had he been there then but not before? Why had he gone away? Had his family been there? Had they all left? Why didn’t she remember ever seeing him with the other children? Why had he always seemed to be keeping a secret? And why, why had he broken his promise to her, the vow that they’d somehow be together? That last question was the most pressing, the most poignant, and the most impossible to ask. She’d sound completely ridiculous.

“There’s so much we could ask each other,” broke in Draco, as if he’d read her mind.

“Yes.” She looked away from him. “So… um… maybe we should…”

“Let it go until later,” said Draco quickly. “We’ve got to deal with the biggest issue right now, which is the property situation.”

“Right,” agreed Ginny, somehow both hurt and relieved. Draco was right, of course, They shouldn’t even begin to untangle the messy thread of their childhood memories. Riddle’s call had made it all too clear that the bigger problem was coming to a head.

“Let’s go into the house and talk,” said Ginny, leading the way back towards the front door. It felt good to do something definite.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers and kudo-ers! :)

Draco looked slowly around the interior of the small house, seeming to take in every detail. “I remember this place,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I was here often, but it looks familiar. We were outside more often—we used to play together back in the weed field, and I think we climbed the tree in front—but I’ve been inside this house at least once.”

_Ergh, I thought we weren’t going to talk about the past!_ Ginny certainly did not feel up to that particular conversation at the moment.

Draco shook himself, as if thinking the same thing. They sat at the table in the front room.

“So. You did actually move into this house just yesterday?” he asked in a businesslike way.

“Yes,” said Ginny, sipping at a mug of cold coffee on the table. “I got the deed in the mail just last week… but you’ve really heard the whole story. I can’t think of anything I didn’t tell Mr. Bufflebuns. But what about you?”

Draco seemed to be collecting his thoughts before he actually began speaking. “I hadn’t lived here in many years,” he said slowly. “I was raised by a much older cousin of my mother’s; I rarely saw him, and I’d heard nothing about the Kilkare mansion since I was a small child.”

Ginny wondered exactly when his father had died, what had happened to his mother, how old he’d been. She decided not to ask. _Not yet, anyway._

“But then, only a couple of months ago,” Draco went on, “I received a letter with a copy of the deed. It was from my cousin, apparently, but nobody was able to actually find him.”

Ginny gave a start.

He smiled faintly. “Yes. It was very much like your situation. Anyway, Mr. Bufflebuns said that it looked completely in order. The house was mine.”

“You know, it sounds like you’ve known that lawyer a long time,” said Ginny.

Draco nodded. “He was my family’s lawyer for many years.”

_And he was a friend of my family, too,_ Ginny thought but didn’t say. She was a little frightened by all the threads connecting their parallel stories. But now wasn’t really the time to explore them.

“But then,” Draco went on, “this Thomas Riddle contacted me with the claim that he had an original deed to the house and lands. And now we’re at an impasse. He says his claim is better than mine, and he won’t let me pay it off. I’ve tried offering him some sum of money to give it up; he’s got to know that his chances of winning in court aren’t good. But he can keep this thing tied up, and that’s what he’s doing. Now he’s basically done the same thing to you.”

“We have to find out what’s really going on,” said Ginny.

“Yes. I feel that it’s somehow… connected. What’s happening to me, what’s happening to you.”

“It does feel like it can’t just all be an accident,” she admitted.

“How are we connected, really?” asked Draco.

His steady silvery gaze made her dizzy. She shifted in her seat and felt a wave of weakness wash over her.

“Are you all right?” she heard him asking.

“Yes, yes.” Ginny rubbed her head. “I haven’t had breakfast yet, that’s all. And there isn’t much to eat here.”

Draco stood up and held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s see if that old diner is still on Main Street.”

It was, and they ate breakfast. Ginny was ravenous enough to almost convince herself that her dizzy spell had been due to hunger. After eating, they strolled through the old train depot and out into the Kilkare Woods. They walked down shady side lanes to the old swimming pool and little general store that Ginny remembered so well.

They talked about nothing and everything. Somehow, they managed to avoid any touchy topics, whether the mess they were both in when it came to their properties, or their shared childhood past. They simply talked—about their interests, their dreams, their goals. Ginny told him about her love of plants and gardening, her desire to start her own business, her restlessness with offices and sitting in front of computers for eight hours a day, her drive and ambition. He talked about his love for art and drawing, his desire to turn derelict buildings to their former glory instead of tearing them down and putting up hideous condos and office buildings. He was traveling often that summer, meeting with other businesses interested in restoration projects, making connections and exploring ideas.

There were a couple of strange moments. They were talking about sports they’d both played in school, and she admitted that she didn’t have very good hand-eye coordination and had mostly done well at track and field. “But didn’t you play Quidditch?” he asked. She’d looked at him blankly. The word had a strange, exotic sound, and Ginny was pretty sure that it didn’t refer to any sport she’d ever heard of.

“Never mind,” he’d said quickly. “I just… never mind.”

Later on, when they’d found an old hamburger stand that had been on Main Street during their childhoods and were sitting at a picnic table, she was telling him about an idea she’d had for a medicinal garden class. Draco was talking about herbs.

“You always were good at Potions,” she’d said without thinking, dipping a fry in ketchup. It had been his turn to give her a strange look that time.

But then they’d started walking towards the Kilkare Woods, and Ginny had forgotten all about those strange moments.

Looking back on it later, Ginny had trouble even identifying what they’d really talked about. But the time flew by.

As they headed back towards the end of Kilkare Road, Ginny saw the early evening sun starting to sink in the sky.

“Six o’clock,” said Draco, looking at his watch.

“How did we spend eight hours?” she asked in surprise.

Draco gave her the half-grin that she was starting to love seeing on his face. “Time flies when you’re having fun, Ginny.”

They stood at the bottom of the drive, in front of the old gnarled oak tree.

“I… um… Colin is going to be back in a little bit,” Ginny said awkwardly. “I really have to talk to him. He’s mad at me, and I guess I can’t blame him. I just… didn’t want him to worry. So I didn’t tell him anything. But that always backfires with Colin, because he has a way of figuring things out, so...”

“See you tomorrow then,” said Draco. “I want to…” He hesitated, which gave Ginny’s mind more than enough time to fill in some interesting suggestions about what Draco Malfoy might want to do on Sunday. “Bring you into the house. Show it to you.”

“So you actually live there?” asked Ginny, glancing in the direction of the mansion.

“I told you I didn’t plan to sell it for development,” said Draco. ”And you saw me walking down the hill, right?”

“I know, but—somehow I didn’t connect it with you actually living there.” Ginny rubbed her head. “I’m not saying that makes any sense, okay?”

He nodded. “Sometime in the afternoon? Three, maybe?”

“Sure.” The slanting sun caught his bright hair and turned it to pale flame. She stared at it, mesmerized, and he stared back. Their hands were so, so close to touching, thought Ginny. If she reached out just the slightest bit…

“Good night, then,” said Draco, and then he turned away and was gone up the drive.

Two hour later, she was sitting on the couch in the living room, stirring a cup of cold tea, when Colin walked in.

“I’m home!” he yelled. “If you’re doing anything with anybody, Ginny, and I think you know what I mean, then I’m going to my room right away!”

“Don’t bother, Col,” she said. “There isn’t anybody else here.”

“Oh,” said Colin, plopping down next to her on the couch. “In that case, you’d better regale me with every gory detail of what happened with that gorgeous hunk of man today.”

Ginny couldn’t help but smile.

“So you do think he’s gorgeous!” Colin pounced. “I’m glad I talked about gay marriage. I wouldn’t want to screw this up for you.”

“It’s not like that.” Ginny blushed.

“Then what is it like?”

“Nothing’s happened. Draco and I just walked around and talked.”

“Draco?” Colin’s brow wrinkled. “Huh. Strange name.”

“Rich people can give their kids whatever kind of weird names they want,” said Ginny.

“So you’re going to hook up with him for his money? I wish I had opportunities like that,” said Colin.

“It’s _really_ not like that. Anyway, I thought you wanted to know more about what’s happening with the house.”

“Yeah, I do,” said Colin, clearly settling in for a long talk.

Ginny breathed a silent sigh of relief that she’d gotten him off the subject of anything personal between herself and Draco. She went on to explain everything she could about the two real estate situations, only realizing just how many similarities there were as she outlined all the facts. Colin looked at her strangely once she was done.

“Do you realize how weird this is?” he asked. “I mean, just the sheer number of parallels between what’s going on with you and with this Draco Malfoy?”

“Oh, I know,” sighed Ginny. “And Thomas Riddle seems to be the connection. But this Mr. Bufflebuns is too.”

Colin had snickered the first twenty times she’d mentioned his name, so he had apparently gotten it out of his system.

“The way that he knew your family, but Draco’s too…” He drummed his fingers against the coffee table. “It’s all just so weird. It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone that was rejected for being too strange. What do you think it all means?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Ginny. “But I think I can figure out more tomorrow.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“Yeah, and he’ll show me the house. The mansion, I should say.”

Colin smiled slyly. “I’ll just bet he wants to _show_ you something.”

“Col, I told you, don’t start in on that—”

“I wish he wanted to show _me_ something, but I don’t think he’d be interested in me—”

“I mean it!” Ginny held up her hand, palm outwards. “Stop.”

“Okay, okay,” said Colin, with the air of a friend making a great sacrifice.

She hesitated _. I should probably leave it at that,_ she thought. _But Colin deserves to know this._ “I’m just going to say one more thing. And then I mean it, I seriously do not want to talk any more about this.”

“I’m all ears,” said Colin, tugging at a lobe.

“Remember that little boy I always talked about, the one who lived next door here? The one I knew when I was seven years old?”

“The one you talked about seven million times? Yes.”

She took a deep breath. “Draco was that little boy.”

Colin nodded.

“You don’t seem very surprised,” said Ginny.

“I’m not. I was wondering when you were going to figure it out.”

“You mean _you_ knew?”

“I had a psychic feeling.” Colin shrugged. “Maybe I should open a 1-900 psychic hotline. I was always pretty good at Divination.”

She stared at him. “What did you say?”

“I was always pretty good at… hey, that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I took some weird class at that New Age summer camp Mom was always making me go to, and then I blocked it out. I hated that camp,” Colin yawned. “Or maybe I’m just tired.”

“I know the feeling,” said Ginny, dismissing what had happened. Or not happened. It wasn’t important at all, really.

The two of them watched more reruns, Ginny vowing to get cable right after the fourth, ate popcorn, and played Scrabble. Just as Ginny was thinking about going to bed early, Colin’s phone rang. He picked it up.

“Yello… oh hi, Harry.”

Ginny’s ears perked up. Colin had told her that Harry was the name of his manager at Starbuck’s.

“What? Really? Now? But I was just…” A pause. “Oh. Okay.”

He hung up and turned to Ginny. “Gin! They need someone for the overnight shift. Harry said I’d get approved for overtime! We are going to have so much money this week. We’ll be able to buy steak. Oh, you can probably get your rich boyfriend to fly in Maine lobster for you or something, but us poor people have to eat too—”

“He’s not my boyfriend, Col!” Ginny rolled her eyes. “And I don’t think he’s going to be giving me any money. He bought a hamburger for me today, but that’s it. Are you going to be okay to drive there and back?”

“I’ll drink a nontuple espresso as soon as I get to Starbuck’s,” Colin assured her. “I’ll be fine. Will you be okay staying here alone?” He started to grin. “Maybe you can get your new boyfriend to come over…”

“He’s _really_ not my boyfriend, Col.”

“Whatever you say-yy,” sang Colin as he darted to the second bedroom to change.

Ginny decided to go to bed immediately after Colin left, but she couldn’t seem to fall asleep right away.

The idea of going up to the Kilkare Mansion, Draco inviting her into the mysterious structure… it all felt like a huge extra step into an intimacy that frightened her, somehow. Even though she couldn’t have said exactly how, or why.

Ginny’s mind ranged freely over her memories of that day as she tossed and turned. Walking with Draco Malfoy… almost, but not quite, holding his hand at lunch… sneaking looks at him as they talked… damn, but he was a handsome young man. She remembered her thoughts of the night before, when she’d awakened from that dream about him, or some odd alternate version of him. Those thoughts hadn’t seemed quite real in the morning. But they did now.

That blurring of the dream-Draco with the real one she knew. The desires of that dream-Ginny, and how they spilled over into her own.

Of course, if she wanted to do those things with Draco, she could; she didn’t need to justify herself, thought Ginny. She wasn’t bound by the same strict rules that she’d somehow known were hobbling her teenaged dream self. But she still wasn’t a woman who did that kind of thing. She didn’t jump into bed with a man she’d met the day before, no matter how sexy he might be or how well they were hitting it off.

No matter what kind of inexplicable bond they seemed to share.

_But still…_

In the middle of all her confusing thoughts, Ginny finally did drift off to sleep.

+++

A noise sounded from somewhere outside the room, perhaps in the corridor. Muffled footsteps. Ginny’s dream self and the dream-Draco sprang apart, breaking the kiss.

“What was that?” she whispered.

It took Draco a few moments to answer. He was breathing heavily, his pale face flushed with color, and he seemed dazed. He’d nearly lost control, this stiff, formal boy who always held control so fiercely, and the dream-Ginny felt a secret thrill of power that she’d done this to him. But it was replaced quickly by fear. If anyone found them…

She reached out for the dark red bed curtains, starting to twitch them aside.

Draco shook his head, and she dropped the curtain and fell silent. The footsteps seemed to hesitate for a ridiculously long moment, and then they moved down the corridor the other way.

She let out a long sigh she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Who was that?” she whispered.

Draco shrugged. “It could have been anyone. My father walks through the corridors every once in a while, when he can’t sleep. I’ve caught Aunt Bellatrix strolling around before; the gods only know why, but her explorations aren’t for any good reason, I’m sure. My mother will come to my rooms after dinner sometimes, but never this late. Or it could be…” His face went blank, but not before Ginny caught a flash of fear.

Her dream self knew who exactly who he meant. The Ginny who listened and observed had no idea. And yet, somehow, her present self did know. Whoever this unknown person was, he was a figure of terror, one that Draco all too often could not avoid. And he was in the house now. That was why she had come here. To try to protect this teenaged Draco in some way? She had only a vague feeling of apprehension for him, a desire to help him, and a sinking feeling that she couldn’t even help herself. They were both stuck in some kind of terrible situation, and it was moving towards a crisis. That much, she knew, even if she could not make out any of the details.

Her dream-self and Draco moved apart slightly and each sat back from each other. Draco seemed more hesitant to stop what they’d been doing, but the dream-Ginny was a little frightened by how fast they’d been moving, how easy and natural it had felt for their intimacy to progress. She was in a boy’s bed in the middle of the night in enemy territory; nobody knew she was there, and her own passions had scared her most of all. She needed to talk for a while.

“How have you been holding up?” she asked Draco.

“Oh—all right, I suppose,” said Draco, not quite looking at her. “I’m able to stay out of his way for the most part. I avoid almost all of the meetings. Mother tries to help, but she really has no influence at all, so I manage it. I’ve got into trouble a few times, but nothing much.”

He was putting on an act. The dream-Ginny knew it, and the real Ginny could tell, even without knowing one bit of the backstory.

“Is he…” She hesitated for a very long moment. “Is he forcing you to… to do anything?”

Draco stiffened, then gave a long sigh. “Nothing that I can tell you about, Ginny.”

Her brows drew together. “I took a lot of chances in coming here, Draco. Don’t you think that you could at least tell me the truth about what’s going on?”

“Ginny.” He picked up one of her hands and stroked it gently. “Please. Please, don’t ask me.”

She could not resist the naked pleading in his voice. “I won’t,” she whispered.

A knock thundered at the door of the bedroom. The two of them sprang apart. Draco’s face turned white so suddenly that he seemed to glow in the darkness. “Stay here!” he hissed urgently. “And whatever you do, don’t move, and don’t make a sound. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Then he left her, and she bit back the cry that rose to her lips, the sound of his name.

_Draco,_ she cried in her mind. _Draco, Draco, oh, please, Draco, come back, come back._

And then the image changed and shifted, and she was standing outside the Kilkare Mansion when she was seven years old, and a tall blond couple was taking Draco away from her and bundling him into a black Cadillac. He was crying, reaching for her, and she was trying to get to him, but they whisked him away. The car disappeared down the drive even as she ran after it, and she could not stop crying. D _raco… Draco…_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and bookmarkers! :)

 

She stepped tentatively over the threshold and into a small entrance hall. Draco kept walking, so she did too, until they were both standing in a huge front hall with a high ceiling, the walls covered in exquisite wood and deep red flocked velvet paper. Small chandeliers were set into the paneled ceiling, and sconces were stuck high into the dark walls. An enormous curving staircase dominated the hall, supported by two floor to ceiling wood pillars. Door branched off on all sides.

“Um…” Ginny began faintly. “It’s a big house…. Mansion… whatever it is. How many rooms does it have?”

“I’m not sure.” Draco shrugged. “Nobody really knows, apparently.”

_Well, that was stupid. Mr. Bufflebuns basically said that yesterday._

“It seems like some kind of blueprint must exist somewhere,” said Ginny.

“There never was one, as I understand it,” said Draco. “My great-grandmother designed this house and had it built in the 1930’s, and she had no formal training as an architect.”

“I’ll bet there weren’t too many female architects then,” said Ginny. She longed to start walking around the house and opening doors, but she wasn’t about to start poking around until Draco did.

“You’re right about that,” said Draco. He glanced around. “I don’t know about you, but I need some coffee.”

Ginny wasn’t completely sure if she’d be able to get to sleep that night if she drank coffee after three o’clock, but she nodded anyway.

He led her down the hall to the left, then up a small flight of stairs, then down another hall, then around several corners, and somewhere along the way, Ginny gave up trying to keep track of where they were going. She caught glimpses of massive dining rooms with tables that could easily seat twenty people, long galleries covered in oil paintings, huge fireplaces, and dim paneled rooms lit by pairs of black iron candelabras. They ended up in a small room with a little kitchen off to one side. She wondered if these had been part of the servants’ quarters at some point, and she sat down with a sigh of relief.

“What do you think so far?” asked Draco, carrying in a tray with coffee, cream, sugar, and spoons.

“It’s…” She made vague motions with her hands. “Overwhelming. Did you actually live here? This doesn’t seem like a place where any children would _live.”_

Draco gave her a strange, sidelong glance. He knew that they were touching on the topic of his childhood again, she realized. His and hers. It was the topic they’d both avoided almost completely, and she honestly could not have said why. But it was the topic that she felt more and more sure that had to discuss.

“Yes,” he said briefly. “Do you want something to eat?”

“I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, and I only had a few crackers then,” she said, dropping the subject just for the moment as she realized how hungry she actually was.

Ginny studied him surreptitiously as he went through the cupboards and the fridge in search of food. Everything he wore just looked so expensive, so perfectly cut, like it had been tailored just for him, as it probably had. It all showed off his lean, toned body so perfectly. She tried to organize her physical pull towards him, compress the sensations into something manageable. Okay, so she wanted to have sex with him. That much, she’d admit. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe it would do her good to shake up her normal rules. She probably needed it. She hadn’t slept with anybody since the vague breakup with her sort-of boyfriend, Dean Thomas, six months before.

_I could probably really use some good sex_ , she thought. _And I could just tell… this would be good, with him. What a great body he has. Mmm. Just the kind I like… thin, but he’s got muscles too. Such big hands and feet. And you know what they always say… men with big hands have big—_

“Bananas?” asked Draco.

Ginny gave a violent start. “Um… um… what?”

He held out a yellow bunch to her. “I’ve found some. There’s cereal too, and milk, but not much else, I’m afraid. I bought a few groceries, but that’s all.”

“Sounds good,” said Ginny.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all, she thought as he sat down across from her. If they did have sex and the whole thing fell apart, then it could be a real disaster. They’d still have to work together on this mysterious case. They’d be living only a few hundred yards away from each other. And she had to find a way to get him to talk about his childhood, which didn’t seem to go too well with the idea of ripping his clothes off. Plus, she could feel her skin heating up at the mere thought of acting like such a total slut. No… it was better to just keep things as they were.

Ginny poured milk into a bowl of Grapenuts and started slicing a banana. “Where did all this food come from?” she asked. “And who’s been taking care of this house? I mean, there sure isn’t much furniture, but other than that, it looks like you could start giving tours here.”

“Bufflebuns said he’d had the house kept up,” said Draco. “I agree, whoever it is has done a good job of it. There’s not even a great deal of renovation to do as far as the cosmetic aspects.”

They ate for a few more moments in silence.  “I’ve been thinking about something. I know it sounds like a crazy idea,” said Ginny. “But your lawyer did say that an original deed could be in this house. Maybe it is here.”

“Yes, I thought about that too,” said Draco. “I admit, I wouldn’t know where on earth to start looking.”

“Did you, uh…” Ginny hesitated. “Did you ever have secret hiding places as a child? I used to hide things under the floorboards with my brother Ron.”

Draco’s face went carefully blank. “I don’t remember. But I suppose we could make a search.”

“You know, we both might remember important details about the house while we start to go through it,” Ginny said. “I mean, who knows, familiar rooms or parts of the house or something could give us some ideas about where a good hiding place might be.”

“You never know,” said Draco, busily buttering a piece of bread.

Every time she mentioned anything relating to the past, she immediately felt that she was treading on dangerous ground, thought Ginny. But really, why should it be dangerous? They’d lived next door to each other in Sunol one long-ago summer when they were small children. They’d been friends. It would make sense if they reminisced about it now. So why was he so diligently avoiding the topic? And for that matter, why had she been avoiding it too until last night’s dream had made her feel so strongly that they needed to discuss it?

Ginny had no real idea. She did know that now, she was willing to talk about the past. But Draco seemed to have a strange, new reluctance to even touch on the subject. She was determined to get past it, even though she wasn’t at all sure how to manage the trick of getting him to even start talking in the first place. _I’ll figure it out somehow_ , she thought.

Draco got up from the table. Ginny picked up the dishes and put them in a dishwasher, searching for soap. “These aren’t going to be automatically washed by magic elves, you know,” she said. He flushed a little and helped her.

They walked out of the small room and through the hall.

“Where on earth do we start?” she asked.

Draco shrugged.

Ginny gritted her teeth. She started to feel almost angry, and she didn’t know why. Maybe it was just that she was finally willing to face up to their shared past, and he was suddenly avoiding the topic more than ever.

They wandered through a large kitchen, a coat room that Ginny thought was at least as large as the average apartment, a reception room, and a breakfast room that opened onto a small screened porch. Draco wasn’t saying much. In fact, he grew more and more silent as they kept walking. Finally, Ginny had had enough. She stopped and crossed her arms.

“Look, there are a gazillion rooms in this place! It isn’t going to work to just walk around. We have to have a plan.”

“Just how do you suggest that we some up with one?” asked Draco, scowling.   


Well, she’d gotten his attention, at least. The problem was that she had no idea how to answer that question. “I don’t know, we could… we could… pick a part of the house that feels important,” she said.

“Feels important—what’s that supposed to mean?”

Something pulled at Ginny’s hand suddenly. She glanced down, sure that Draco was trying to physically drag her out of the room for some weird reason.

But he wasn’t touching her.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Draco. But by the expression on his face, she knew that he did.

“It’s like something touched me… or someone.” She peered around the room.

“There’s nobody here,” said Draco. “Look, maybe there’s just no point to this. We should wait until Tuesday and meet with Bufflebuns again. I highly doubt we’re going to discover anything in this house.”

“I f _elt_ that! There it is again.”

“You’re imagining things,” Draco said coldly. “You probably need more sleep. I know I do. Ginny, why don’t you just go home, and we can talk tomorrow—”

“There!” Ginny stabbed a finger towards the far wall of the enclosed porch. “Whatever that was, it came from that direction. That’s the way we should go.” She started marching away.

“You’re about to walk straight into a wall.” Draco tried to grab her arm; she eluded him.

“I’m not. There’s a door just outside the hallway.”

“No, there isn’t. You can’t possibly know any such thing.” Draco almost ran to keep up with her. H _e’s trying to keep me from finding it_ , she realized _. Too late!_

“I’m telling you, there’s no door…´” His words trailed off. Ginny was throwing open a narrow door set into the hallway wall. His face blanched white.

“It was a coincidence,” he said in a faint voice.

“Oh really?” She put her hands on her hips. “Then why do I know what I’m going to see behind that door?”

“You can’t know…”

“Oh yes I can. There’s a staircase.” She turned round and looked through the open door for the first time. Draco pressed his head next to hers, and his mouth almost dropped open.  A small, winding staircase met their eyes. 

“No,” he said, as if to himself. “You can’t know this.

“

“Apparently, I can,” said Ginny, starting up the steps.

“You don’t know where anything is here, no more than I do.”

“Oh yes, I do, and so do you! You’re the one who spent at least part of your childhood here, remember?” She kept marching up the stairs, flipping on a light switch so that a sconce stuck high in the wall spilled a pool of light down onto the dark wood. “And you brought me into this house when we were children, Draco. More than once.”

“I…”

There was enough light now that she could see how pale Draco’s face had really become.

“Are you going to tell me you didn’t?” she flung back over shoulder. She’d reached the top of the stairs, which ended in a small closed door.

He looked at her silently.

“If you want more proof,” she said, “I know what’s behind _that_ door, too.” She was stretching here. She had only a vague memory of a child Draco leading her by the hand up these stairs and fumbling at the door.

“See?” she said, hoping she sounded confident. She threw the door open.

Sunlight spilled down through the high windows set into the wall of the tiny, circular room. The floor was covered in a rich Persian carpet and scattered with fading plush pillows. Ginny hadn’t known until that moment that she would recognize the room, but she knew it now. It was one of the turrets on the side of a connected building of a house. There was another, smaller door set into the wall of the turret room, and it was the one that opened out into nothing on the second floor. Looking at Draco’s face, she saw that he recognized it too.

“You do remember, don’t you?” she asked.

His tense silence was answer enough.

She turned to face him. “We were both up here that summer. Weren’t we?”

Still, he was silent.

“Fine, don’t answer. I know it’s true.” She crossed the miniature room. At first, he didn’t move, and she wondered if he was just going to turn around and leave. Then he followed her, which was a matter of only a few steps.

“We have to figure this out, Draco,” she said, facing him. “We’re… connected somehow, in ways that don’t seem to make any sense at all. But our common link is that we were here that summer, when I was seven, when you were eight. And I’m starting to think that some strange things happened that summer, things that I don’t understand. And we’ve got to talk about them. We’ve got to share our memories so that we can make sense of it all.”

Draco didn’t reply. She studied his face intently. They had reached a turning point. Either he was going to talk to her about their past, or he was going to shut her out and send her away, and then they’d just have to deal with their problems separately. Except that she didn’t think they could. She was strangely sure that they would either come through this together, or they would fall apart on their own.

He swallowed hard, licked his lips. “Ginny…”

She nerved herself and put a hand on his arm. His skin was smooth, his muscles sinewy, but she forced herself to concentrate rather than getting lost in the sensations of touching him. “Draco. Please.”

He let out a long, long sigh. “Yes,” he said, and she could tell how impossibly difficult the admission was for him. What she didn’t know was why. And she thought that he didn’t either.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, we knew each other that summer. Yes, I remember you. Yes, I brought you to this house, more than once.”

She stood very still, afraid to move or make a sound in case even the slightest disturbance would cause him to clam up and run.

“The last time was right before we both went away,” said Draco. “And something… I don’t know… something bad happened. I don’t know what it was. I’m well aware of how hopelessly vague that sounds.”

“I remember,” said Ginny. “I mean, I don’t actually remember what it was, any more than you do. But yes… something bad, or frightening, or both.”

“Then they took me away from you. I was afraid, and I was sure, that… that it was my fault. That I made you go away. That’s why I don’t want to talk about any of it.”

Ginny nodded. “But we have to.”

“Yeah.” Draco let out a long, long sigh. “We do.”

Somehow, they were both sinking down to the floor, sitting on the big pillows, pressed closely next to each other.  He lay down, she sat cross-legged, and his head went into her lap, as naturally as if they’d done it a thousand times.

“I’m so tired,” he murmured. “I was up half the night trying to figure out where that copy of the deed could possibly be, if he even exists in the first place. I certainly wasn’t getting anywhere by myself.”

She reached down to gently strokes his head, feeling his fine, pale hair sift through her fingers, rubbing his temples.

“Aaah,” he sighed. “How good that feels, Ginny.”

She flushed at the thrill that went through her entire body at that. Just the fact that he said her hands on him felt good seemed to be enough to set her off. _This really isn’t the time for it! If there even is a good time._

“I didn’t want to talk about our past,” Draco went on, his eyes closed. “ I suppose… I didn’t want to remember. Because it was a wonderful summer, and then you went away. But…” He hesitated.

“What?”

“I agree that we do have to talk about it.”

Somehow, Ginny had the feeling that this wasn’t exactly what he’d considered saying. But she didn’t want to push him further. It had taken a lot for him to get this far.

After a few moments, Draco spoke again. “That summer was the only one when I remember actually staying here. I lived with my parents in a house in Pacific Heights, in San Francisco. When I was a very small child. Then I was sent here that summer… I don’t know why. Nothing was ever explained to me, as I suppose it isn’t to most children. My parents weren’t there very often. But an older cousin was… I wouldn’t say he took care of me, a nanny was hired for the summer to do that, but he paid for everything, I suppose. The house was his, I think.”

“What was he like?” asked Ginny, her fingertips making little circles around his temples.

“Yes, that, keep doing _that_ … I almost never saw him. He was a tall man, dark and austere. He always wore black, which was very strange, now that I think of it. This house only has air conditioning in a few rooms. He rarely spoke to me, but I remember his deep, smooth voice… anyway, I wasn’t supposed to go out very often, but I had a habit of sneaking away. It wasn’t very hard. The nanny lived in a couple of downstairs rooms, and she liked spending time with her boyfriends. There were lots of opportunities to go outside. And so, one day early in the summer, I met you.”

“I was playing in the big weed field at the edge of the land around my house,” Ginny said, remembering.  She’d been happily weaving little baskets out of grass, a craft she’d learned to do earlier that summer at a Girl Scout camp. Then the long grasses had parted, and a little blond boy appeared. His bright gray eyes had studied her. _I’m Ginny,s_ he had said. _Who are you_? _Draco,_ he’d told her. He was reserved, and she was outgoing, but they became instant friends in that moment. Or something more than friends, something that would have one day naturally developed into an intimacy far beyond friendship if they’d continued to grow up next door to each other.

She could tell by his face that he remembered every detail, too.

“I don’t think my parents were paying that much attention to me that summer either,” she said. “I don’t remember them ever meeting you. They were always talking behind closed doors… and I’d play with Ron sometimes, but Fred and George were always off by themselves, playing tricks and doing magic shows for the other kids. Bill was eighteen and Charlie was sixteen, so they were almost never there, they were always so busy chasing girls around and getting drunk that summer. Percy was twelve… he was at a science camp in Sacramento. So he survived--” Her throat closed, thinking of her older brothers, of her parents, of the terrible tragedy that had happened to them all.

“What happened?” Draco asked softly.

“They all died in a van accident right after that summer, except for me and Ron,” Ginny said in a clipped voice. “Ron always said he remembered the accident. I don’t at all. Percy wasn’t there because he was still at that camp. I don’t see either one of them all that much now, but Ron is a police officer with the LAPD. Percy is in medical school at OHSU—Oregon Health and Science University. He says he’s doing well…” This was the recitation that Ginny always gave on the subject, but it just seemed to trail off into nothingness this time.

 “I’m sorry,” Draco said quietly. “I know that doesn’t do any good at. this point, but I’m sorry that this happened to you.”

“It happened a long time ago,” said Ginny, as lightly as she could. “We were all raised by my great-uncle after that.  But we rarely saw him.”

Draco looked up at her, an odd expression in his eyes. “That’s pretty much exactly what happened to me. My parents died in a car accident in the fall, and then I was raised by the same relative who owned the house that summer. And I almost never saw him.”

“I’m… sorry, too.” A chill ran through Ginny, but she said nothing more for the moment.

“It’s so strange,” said Draco, as she kept running her hands over his head. “The parallels between the two of us.”

“Very,” said Ginny.

“There’s something else, too. Here, I want to show you something—” He fumbled in the pocket of his pants. It was obviously difficult to get his hand in there from his position on the floor. Ginny had a sudden instinct to offer to reach into that pocket for him. She might have to rummage around for quite a while. _No!_ she sternly reminded herself.

“I left it downstairs,” said Draco. “Here, I’ll show you.”

In a way, she hated to break the spell they had both created. The silence of the tiny turret room, the feel of Draco’s head in her lap, how good it felt to run her hand through his hair… but she’d finally got him to talk about the past, and she felt that they finally might get somewhere. She followed him down the stairs and all the way back to the servants’ quarters.

 “This is really just insane,” said Ginny when they got downstairs. “How many rooms does this house even have? I mean, I know you don’t actually _know,_ but some kind of an estimate…”

Draco shrugged. “No idea. Dozens, for sure. When I was a child, I stayed in a few rooms in just one wing, really, and I don’t think I ever brought you back there.”

“You were too worried that we’d get caught that way,” she said, remembering. “You were right, too. If that nanny ever tore herself away from her boyfriend, that’s the first place she’d look.”

Draco reached up to a hook on the wall and took down a ring of keys.

“What on earth are all of these for?” Ginny asked dubiously, staring at the huge metal ring that bristled with keys. They were so thickly packed that most of them stood almost straight out. A tiny plastic label was stuck to the bow of each key.

He plucked a folded paper off a top shelf and held it out to her. It was a list of the names of rooms, halls, closets, outbuildings, and she didn’t even know what else. _Grand Ballroom… Second Hall Closet, Third Floor, Southeast Wing… Left Top Cabinet, Fourth Room, Easternmost Storage Attic, Sixth Floor…_

“My God, that’s a lot of keys,” said Ginny, staring at the list and then back at the keyring.

“I think that’s why I didn’t show it to you before,” said Draco a little ruefully. “It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“No kidding. Where on earth do we even start?”

Draco grinned. “I was hoping you had some ideas.”

“Actually, I do,” said Ginny, feeling a little quiver in her chest at that grin of his. “Or at least one idea. I think we’ve got to base our search on our memories of where we’ve gone in this house together.”

“I think you’re right,” said Draco. “The strangest thing is…” He frowned. “I don’t have the least idea why. I’m not sure if I ever saw the original deed, if it even does exist.”

“I’m not either. And you like being sure about things, don’t you?” The corners of Ginny’s mouth quirked up.

“I do,” Draco admitted. “And I don’t think I have too many clear memories of exactly where we did go together in this house. But the idea is all we’ve got to go on.”

That was true enough, thought Ginny. She closed her eyes, trying to extend the vague memories she had from that summer, to clarify them into something distinct. “I remember these little rooms,” she said. “But other than this, I don’t think we were really on the first floor. It was too likely that somebody would notice us.”

They began to walk through the house again, pausing from time to time to explore a room or hall. They didn’t find anything, but the search felt purposeful and natural. What they did was leading somewhere, or at least might be. It didn’t feel like aimless wandering, as their earlier searches had.

When they both got hungry at some point, they went back to the little kitchen downstairs, and Ginny made sandwiches and salads. Draco attempted to help, but it was all too clear that he’d never cooked anything in his life and probably couldn’t boil water. They ate in companionable silence.

“I feel like we’re getting closer,” Ginny said at last, as Draco loaded the dishwasher under supervision. “Hey, you’re getting pretty good at that.”

He flashed her that grin again, the one that made her knees go weak. She held onto the countertop and hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“What can I say? I’m a man of many talents.”

_I’ll just bet you are_ , she thought, but managed to keep from saying. There was no way to say that sentence, or anything like it, and keep it free of baggage. What could she possibly follow it up with if he just gave her a blank stare? _Um, I mean, I’ll bet you’re talented with your hands? No, that just makes it worse_. _You must really know how to play things? No… You must have magic fingers… NO! Oh, how about just saying, I’ll bet you’re really fucking good in bed. Which is super intimidating because I’m sure I have about one-zillionth as much experience as you, and you’re used to sex with rich girls whose manicures cost as much as every single thing I have ever owned put together, and I don’t even know if you’re interested in me, because I’m not a size negative zero and I have to work for a living and I have big feet and--_

“So where do you want to start?” He broke into her thoughts.

_Ugh. I need to stay focused._

“Well, I remember going up that staircase for sure,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure that I do too,” said Draco.

They both walked slowly up the carpeted staircase, Ginny running her hand along the smooth polished wood of the banister. They walked down a hall, pausing to identify keys from the printed list and unlock doors. After glancing inside each room, they shook their heads in unison. When Ginny opened a door and saw a glimpse of bookshelves, she stepped in. Draco nodded in agreement.

“Look at this list, it’s insane,” he muttered, running his finger down all of the library labels. Besides the door leading in, there were keys for closets, cabinets, and individual locked bookshelves. He tried various keys as Ginny wandered around the dark-paneled room. Rows of shelves stretched almost to the ceiling, the library was enormous, it had separate subsections—and this was just one location. She wondered if they really were crazy to think they’d be able to find a tiny hiding place for a folded paper deed, and that was assuming that it even existed in the first place. _There’s nothing to do but try._

Then she jumped as she felt a large, warm hand slip into hers. “Draco?” she almost squeaked.

“I hope there’s nobody else here,” he said with a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Uh…”

“I believe that we were somewhere back here,” he said. “And I have the feeling that we were holding hands. It’s possible that touch is the secret to figuring out exactly where we were.”

A vague memory bloomed in Ginny’s mind at his words, a picture, really. She and the blond boy wandered down a dark passageway in the library, shelves of books looming above them. And yes, they’d been holding hands. Although when she was seven and he was eight, that had been a different experience indeed.

They moved further and further back into the darkest part of the shelves. Ginny closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of old books, musty paper, and something complex and calming, like incense in a church. “Here,” she said, stopping so suddenly that Draco ran right into her. She felt his lean, strong body pressed against every inch of hers for just a second, and then he pulled away.

She opened her eyes again to find herself staring at a large wooden cabinet with a fancy lock. Draco fished through the ring of keys and found one with the correct label. The metal was dark and ornate, cast in the shape of a twisting vine. The wooden door swung open to reveal exactly one book on one of the many shelves. Draco reached out and took it, holding it up to the faint light. Then he frowned. Ginny peered at the cover.

_Malleus Maleficarum._

‘Ugh,” she said. “I know what this is. It’s a medieval witch hunt manual.” She’d once been at a Portland Neopagan Eostre Ritual and Candy Egg Hunt where the book and others like it were discussed and roundly condemned.

“I know,” said Draco, a strange look on his face. “The idea was to challenge arguments against the existence of witchcraft and instruct magistrates on how to interrogate people identified as witches.”

“How vile,” said Ginny shuddering.

“Couldn’t agree more,” said Draco. “The question is why it’s locked up in a cabinet.”

“I don’t know, but I don’t see any hiding places for anything else.” Ginny scanned the interior of the cabinet. “It can stay locked up for all I care.”

“I agree.” Draco moved to put the book back in the cabinet, and it fell open to the title page. He sucked in his breath. Ginny moved forward to see what he was looking at.

_Property of Thomas Riddle._

There seemed no point in asking what this might mean, thought Ginny. They both knew that Thomas Riddle must have been in this house at some point. But why had he written his name in that horrible book and then locked it in a cabinet? And why had they both been drawn to it? She could tell that Draco had the same questions and was also keeping them to himself.

He slipped a hand into hers as they walked down the corridor, and she felt comforted.  She didn’t know, of course, if he was thinking of anything besides comfort, and she wasn’t about to ask. But the scare of finding that book made her want to touch him more than ever.

They wandered through the second floor, passing all the doors, neither one feeling anything that seemed to pull at them. They went to the third floor. Then Ginny found herself pointing at a wooden door that looked like any other.

“Here,” she said, but Draco was already checking one section of the list and choosing a key.

The door swung open into a room that made Ginny gasp. The beautiful polished parquet floor, the elaborate recessed ceiling, the intricately carved wooden wainscoting, the inlaid cabinets with stained glass windows—it all made her want to move in forever. She crossed the room and feasted on the sight of the amazing hand-carved wooden organ, its brass pipes nearly reaching the exquisite carving that curved up to the ceiling.

“The grand ballroom,” she said, peering up at the polished gold and silver chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

Draco gave her a strange look. “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s called. How did you… I suppose I don’t need to ask. We were both here, that summer.”

“We were,” said Ginny. “The memory’s really vague, though.” She could just picture herself hand in hand with the small Draco, giggling as they skidded across the polished floor.

“It’s the same for me,” said Draco. “I obviously can’t remember why we were here, or anything like that, but it’s a happy memory.”

“I remember laughing. And I think we were dancing, or we called it dancing, anyway…” She began to twirl in the middle of the floor, and then started in surprise as Draco’s hand went around her waist. 

“Do you actually know how to dance?” she asked. He obviously did, and he led her in a waltz, which she was almost able to follow.

“You’re not bad either,” said Draco.

“Colin’s grandma used to try to teach me… she owned dance studios in Chicago when she was young,” said Ginny. It was hard to concentrate on anything with his hand around her waist. She could feel the impression of each finger so distinctly. At least she had toned stomach muscles. She wondered if he noticed, if he was thinking or feeling any of the same things she was.

“Imagine that the organ’s playing,” murmured Draco in her ear.

Great. Now she had to deal with the sensation of his lips on her earlobe, too.

“Mm-hm,” she somehow managed to say. He kept moving around the floor, and the motion was soothing.

She closed her eyes, and she did picture the imagined scene of this grand ballroom filled with guests, maybe in Draco’s grandmother’s era. Women in strapless 1950’s ball gowns with silk and lace and long full skirts, white gloves, pearl chokers, red lipstick and coiffed hair. Men in black evening tie and tails. Subdued chatter, the clink of champagne glasses, a drift of cigarette smoke. And the organ playing a waltz.

It was almost as if the unheard music came to a natural end, and she was standing still. Ginny opened her eyes. Draco’s face was above hers, and her eyes ran over his sculpted bone structure. He wasn’t really handsome if she picked apart his features one by one, she thought. His gray eyes were too big, his cheekbones too high, his nose too long, his chin too pointed. But when it all came together, his face shaped itself into something she would never forget. And he was lowering his head down very close to hers. Was he actually going to kiss her?

_Why not?_ she told herself. _It isn’t actually the 1950’s, or the 1930’s, or whenever this house was originally built. We can go in a bedroom and have sex right now if we want to. I’m not like that other Ginny, the dream-Ginny who spent her entire life being told not to let a boy touch her… Colin would definitely tell me to just go for it…_

And then something plucked at her arm. She knew before she looked down that whatever had touched her, it wasn’t Draco.

“I felt something,” she said.

He nodded, seeming unsurprised.

“You know?” she asked.

“I’ve felt it too, Ginny. Something seemed to pull me towards the grand ballroom while we were walking down the hall, actually.  It’s a strange feeling, like an invisible force.”

“We’d better figure out where it’s trying to lead us,” said Ginny.

“Yes. I think you’re right.” Draco disengaged himself from her, taking his hand from round her waist. Maybe he actually seemed reluctant to do it, she thought, but then again, maybe she wanted his feeling to match hers so much that she was convincing herself. Either way, they had to find out what that pull might mean.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and reviewers! :) Things start to get more explicit in this chapter, but no actual smutty content yet.

 

  
“It was touching my right arm. So I think it might be good to try this side.” Ginny started walking towards the far wall, which had a fireplace and several built-in cabinets. There was no way to know where to even start to look. She closed her eyes, hoping to feel the touch again, and almost jumped up when a hand slid around her waist. It did not belong to the ghostly, unknown force. She had already memorized the feel of Draco’s fingers.

“We seem to be more likely to find clues when I’m touching you,” he said in her ear.

_I couldn’t agree more,_ she thought. Maybe it would be even better if his bare skin was touching hers. If she took off her blouse, for instance, and then his hand crept all the way up to brush the side of her breast, and then _… oh, stop it!_

“I think… here,” she said past a catch in her voice, reaching out to touch a large cabinet door that was set into the wall. Draco searched through the keyring and pulled out an ornately carved brass key. The little door opened, but the cabinet was empty.

Ginny sat back with a sigh. “I just know this was it. Maybe there’s something else in here.” She ran her fingers over the interior of the cabinet, finding nothing. Draco’s hand closed over hers.

“Oh!” She couldn’t help her exclamation, even though it made it feel like a moron. _Oh God, I’m acting like I’m about thirteen years old. What is the matter with me?_

“I think that we’ve got to stay in contact at all times while we’re searching,” said Draco.

His lips were touching her ear. If he moved sideways just the tiniest bit, he would be in the perfect position to start licking the curves of her neck. _Which he’s not going to do! Get ahold of yourself, Ginny—he just said that the only reason he needs to keep touching me is that we seem to be coming closer to solving the secrets in this house when he does it. And speaking of coming close… stop it! Just stop. He probably has a whole of string of girlfriends, you know. Or booty calls. Or whatever. He probably wouldn’t even be interested in adding you to the list. So stop._

“You’re right,” she said, wishing that she didn’t sound quite so breathless.

Together, they ran their linked fingers over the floor of the cabinet. Ginny felt a raised, metal circle, and she traced the shape of a keyhole.

“Is there another key labeled for this cabinet?” she asked.

“Yes… here it is.” Draco fished out another, smaller key, barely more than an inch or two in length. He fit it into the small keyhole and pulled up a hidden trapdoor in the floor.

“I really wish I had a flashlight,” he said. “There’s actually something called a California trapdoor spider, you know. Never mind—I’ll reach in here.”

He let go her hand before she could protest and rummaged around in the space under the door.

“It’s like a small box set into the floor,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s even anything hidden in—” His face took an odd expression. “Wait. There is.”

He sat back, taking her with him. Draco held up something in his hand.

“What on earth?” Ginny asked dubiously. It was a shaft of dark wood about nine or ten inches long.

“I think it’s supposed to be a wand,” said Draco.

“A magic wand,” said Ginny. ““This looks like the kind of thing you’d find at a Halloween store for a wizard costume. Maybe it’s from a costume party that was held here?”

“I don’t know…. But even if that’s the explanation, I still can’t think of a reason why it would have ended up in this cabinet,” said Draco, rolling it between his fingers. “This is hawthorn wood, I think.” She couldn’t help thinking how oddly natural it looked for him to be holding a wand. And she wouldn’t be surprised if it was about the same size as… _STOP._

“Unicorn hair in the center,” Ginny said absently as she tried not to theorize about the size of various items. She only realized what she’d said when Draco stared at her.

“Is this some kind of Halloween accessory you’ve seen before?” he asked.

“Um… no.” Ginny really felt like a moron now. “I don’t have any idea why I said that.”

After another long look, Draco got up and tucked the wand, or whatever it actually was, into his waistband.

“Who knows when we’ll need to cast a magic spell,” he said, a corner of his mouth quirking up.

Damn, but that was a sexy look.

 They left the room and started down the corridor again. Draco seemed lost in thought, and Ginny wondered exactly what those thoughts were. Was he going over the mysteries of that day? Trying to figure out why they’d found two bizarre items but nothing more? What?

A dangerous idea came to Ginny.

Was he thinking about her?

He stopped near the staircase, and she waited to hear what he would say-- or what he might do. Would he just lean down and kiss her? They’d come so close before. Should she maybe stand on tiptoe and kiss him? But again, it came back to the same problem. She really did not know if he was interested in her in that way. But if he did want to kiss her…

“I’m starving,” announced Draco, starting for the staircase.

Well, so much for romance. Ginny followed him.

Once they’d gotten downstairs to the small kitchen, she realized how hungry she was, too. And how tired.

“What time is it?” Ginny yawned as Draco took fruit and cheese out of the fridge.

He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. “You’re not going to believe this. It’s almost ten.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe It,” said Ginny.

They ate the fruit and sliced cheese. Ginny had an extremely hard time looking away from Draco every time he bit into a ripe, fuzzy peach. He seemed preoccupied, and he didn’t say much; her few questions were answered with monosyllables. She was _definitely_ starting to think that he wasn’t interested in getting her into bed.

“Maybe… maybe I should go home pretty soon,” she said tentatively.

“Mmm,” said Draco. She felt his eyes on her, but he said nothing more. With a sinking heart, she picked up her purse from the counter where she’d left it and started digging through it.

“Ugh,” she said. “I can’t find my keys. I think I actually didn’t bring them. And Colin’s at work by now, and he has the other key. I don’t know what I’m going to—"

“Ginny.” Draco interrupted her. “Look at this.”

She moved to sit next to him, where he’d pulled up a kitchen chair. He was pointing at the list of sections and rooms that matched the huge keychain for the mansion.

“2824 Kilkare?” Ginny read incredulously from the page. “Wait. Wait a minute. Does this mean that you have a copy of my key?”

“It means that a copy was already on this keychain,” said Draco, his voice strange and stilted.

“And that means…” Ginny had no idea how to finish the sentence.

“I don’t have any idea what it means,” said Draco.

Ginny shivered. While they’d been eating under the warm table light in the kitchen, it was easy to dismiss a lot of the strangeness of that day. Both she and Draco could easily have been imagining the seemingly inexplicable things that had happened. The times when they’d both thought they felt someone touching them could be explained away. In a house this old, there were all kinds of drafts and creaks and cracks, and the power of suggestion could have taken care of the rest. As for the strange things they’d found, well, Draco’s older cousin sounded like a very strange person, exactly the kind who would have kept creepy old books and New Age-y nonsense like wands. If he was the actual owner of the house, it made sense that he would have left some weird items locked up in cabinets.

But this… the key to her own house on the keyring for the Kilkare Mansion… this was real. And she did not know why it was there.

On the other hand, there were probably lots of reasons that just weren’t occurring to her at the moment. For all she knew, her parents had been friends with Draco’s parents and had given them the key at some point. She was aware that the explanation didn’t make any sense at all, but at least it _was_ an explanation of some kind. _I don’t think I can take any more bizarre inexplicable things today_ , she thought.

Draco’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Would you like to stay?” he asked.

She looked up sharply. His face was neutral, and he wasn’t touching her. He certainly didn’t look or sound like he was proposing a night of wild passion. So she wasn’t sure why he was asking her.

“Draco, it’s not like my apartment is in Oakland and I have to drive home,” she said. “I live about five hundred yards away.”

“Yes. And now we know that you can get into your house with my key.” His eyes were very steady. “Would you like to stay anyway?”

And before Ginny could think of a word to say, before she could wonder what he meant, before she could do anything, he leaned over and kissed her.

At first, she could not believe that the kiss was happening. She’d forced herself to believe that he was only touching her because he had the idea that if they touched, they’d feel some kind of weird mystical pull towards the secrets of the house. Now he was kissing her.

And it was the most incredible kiss she’d ever had. The most amazing sensation she’d ever felt. His firm, warm lips on hers, his mouth starting to explore hers, his hand stealing behind her neck and pulling her even closer. He shifted position slightly in the chair next to her, and _what the hell is that against my leg, is that seriously his—_

And then he pulled away. He was breathing heavily, and he studied her face. Ginny panicked.

“I’m not having sex with you,” she blurted out. “I don’t care how good looking you are. I don’t do that kind of thing. I don’t sleep with someone when I’ve only known them for two and a half days. I don’t—”

“Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”

She somehow knew that if she said nothing more, he would not push the issue. He’d politely bring her home and unlock her door with his key, and that would be the end of it. They’d be business partners, no more.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Ginny thought about actually kicking herself under the table.

“Don’t be,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. Did he look hopeful? She hoped so.

“It’s just that, um… we seriously did meet less than three days ago,” said Ginny, trying to explain. “Draco, I just don’t do this kind of thing. I do not have sex with men I just met.” She flushed. She still didn’t know if he’d actually wanted sex, or just a casual kiss.

“I’m shocked,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing.”

Ginny sunk her head in her hands and wondered if there might be a larger trapdoor in the servants’ kitchen, so she could just drop through the floor and disappear.

  
“You had plans to take advantage of me,” said Draco. “I feel so cheap.”

“Argh,” mumbled Ginny.

“You just want to _use_ me.”

Finally, she heard the laughter in his voice. When she peeped up at him, he was clearly having trouble keeping a straight face.

“Draco, you were teasing me this entire time!” _Except when you kissed me… maybe._

“Yes.” He moved his hand towards hers, not quite touching it. “Nothing will happen that you don’t want, Ginny. But… I want you here. Last night, I remember how much I liked knowing that you were next door. But tonight, after everything that’s happened—please stay. This house is so enormous, so empty.”

“Hmmph,” said Ginny. “So you’re just looking for a sleep-in companion. Can’t you hire somebody for that?”

“I’ve never needed to do that,” he said, grinning.

She blushed again when she realized what she’d implied.

“Come on,” he said, rising from the table and taking her hand.

A jolt of almost-memory shot through her mind. They were in the servants’ kitchen in another house, one very like the Kilkare Mansion. _Malfoy Manor._ Yes, that’s what it was called. She had come to see Draco, but they needed to be careful and stealthy. He was bringing her upstairs to his rooms; they took half of the north wing on the seventh floor, and he could keep her hidden. Her heart was pounding with thick, dark excitement, because they’d be alone there. Completely alone… and then, he had taken her hand.

“What?” He glanced back at her.

She took a deep breath. “Look, this is going to sound crazy, but when you… took my hand… it’s like I almost remember another time when you did that. In the past.”

He gave her a long, sidelong glance. “I’m sure it did happen. We already know that we held hands when we were children, during that summer.”

“I know, but… “ Ginny struggled to explain what she’d meant when she wasn’t sure of her own meaning. “But in this memory, or almost a memory, we’re teenagers. I’m sixteen; you’re seventeen. And we didn’t know each other then. But we were here, or… well, almost here.”

“We were in the Malfoy Manor?” asked Draco.

“What? I’ve never heard this house called that. It’s always the Kilkare Mansion. Why did you call it Malfoy Manor?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said softly. “But Ginny, will you stay?”

Ginny took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.

They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. The corridor was completely dark, and Draco switched on a couple of wall sconces as they walked. Each cast a pool of orange light onto the red Persian carpet. Between those circles of light, the hall was in darkness.

“I understand why you didn’t want to come up here alone,” said Ginny. “It’s a little… creepy.”

“This is the perfect setup for a haunted house,” said Draco. “Although I haven’t seen any ghosts yet.”

Ginny wondered if that was completely true. Of course, they’d both been experiencing the ghosts of the past, which weren’t the same as spirits currently drifting around. _It makes sense that the memories from that summer would be coming back,_ she thought. _But the problem is that other time, the one I’ve dreamed about twice now, the one that can’t be real…_

“There’s a large bedroom suite up on this floor,” said Draco. “Several rooms, two bathrooms… I don’t generally stay here, but it’s very nice.”

What exactly was he saying? Did he mean they were going to sleep there together? And just how much togetherness was he thinking about?

As Ginny tried to decide whether to actually ask any of those questions, Draco stopped in front of a door and opened it with a key. The door swung wide, Draco turned on a light switch, and Ginny was looking into a large master bedroom.

Slowly, she walked inside and began to look around. It was a beautiful room, all soft shades of brown and gold, burnished wallpaper, curved walnut carvings leading up to a paneled ceiling, inlaid wooden furniture, draped red velvet curtains puddling down onto intricately woven Persian rugs.

She walked to the windows and pushed aside a curtain. Before she looked down, she knew what she would see. And she did. The moon was full and high in the sky, and the landscape below was bathed in white light. She was looking down at an old-fashioned rose garden. It was wild and overgrown. But other than that, it was the same one she’d seen from the window of Draco’s bedroom in her dream.

Ginny shivered at the feel of Draco’s arm slipping around her waist. He stood beside her and spoke in her ear, very quietly.

“There’s a rose garden, Ginny, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” she said without taking her eyes off the ground below. “Formally laid out, but very overgrown.”

“And there’s a large fountain in the center.”

“There is. You’ve seen it, right?”

“I don’t know,” said Draco. “I haven’t looked out the window yet, but… ah, yes, it’s just the way I thought it would be.”

“You must remember it from when you were a child,” said Ginny. She wondered if he would expand his fingers to stretch out across more of her waist. His hands were so large that he could easily touch the crest of her hip with his little finger and the side of her left breast with his thumb.

“I suppose so,” said Draco. “But…” He hesitated. “Never mind.”

He turned then, and walked away from the window, and the moment was broken. Again, Ginny was left wondering what he’d meant to say. And also, if he’d actually wanted to keep touching her. She still didn’t know what she thought about that. Yes, young men tended to want sex, no matter what, but he must have so many girls available to him that she probably didn’t seem like anything special.

Draco paused at the other end of the room and looked at her with an unreadable expression. Ginny really wished that she knew what to do or say in return. Before she could think of anything, she was dismally aware that she had waited too long to respond, if there even was any right response to make.

“I won’t even sleep in the same room,” he said.

“Um…” Ginny began, with zero idea how to end the sentence.

“I’ll sleep in here,” said Draco. “It’s a second bedroom.”

She still couldn’t think of anything to say. He walked into the room and closed the door.

Apparently, that was it for the night. Draco was actually going to sleep in that second bedroom, and he’d left her the larger one. Ginny had no idea what to think, or how to feel. She had a vague sense that he was being very polite and respectful, recognizing that just because she hadn’t refused him, she also hadn’t said yes, even if she herself hadn’t been sure what she meant by her negative reply, not pressuring her, and so on and on and oh _God_ but she’d longed for him to bend his head and wrap his arms round her body and kiss her again.

But it wasn’t a good idea, she told herself firmly. So it was good that Draco had left her alone.

Really. It _was._

Ginny glanced at herself in the standing mirror next to the dressing table. Her hair was a snarled mess, her face was smudged with dirt, and her clothes were crumpled and dusty. _Ugh. I wish I could take a shower._ Maybe she could. Draco had said there were two bathrooms, after all. Of course, she’d be lucky if it had toilet paper. It certainly wouldn’t be stocked with towels, or soap, or much of anything else. Draco had said that this wasn’t the bedroom he normally used. _He must have chosen this one because he knew it had another room with a separate bed_.

She opened a door on the opposite end of the room without much hope and saw a beautiful bathroom, with a huge soaking tub and separate shower. Ginny was amazed to see that towels and washcloths were hanging on the racks, and the shower’s shelves were filled with gel, soaps, back brushes, and puffs. She looked through a closet and actually found a green silk robe on a hanger. There wasn’t a set of pajamas, of course, or any clean underwear. But it wasn’t as if Draco was even going to see her until morning. The other bathroom must connect with his smaller room, so he’d have no reason to come into the master bedroom. In the morning, she’d have plenty of time to change back into yesterday’s clothes. _Too bad magic elves aren’t going to wash them overnight._

Ginny stripped off her clothes and hung them over an empty rack in one corner, stepping into the shower with a delicious sigh of relief. She closed her eyes and let the steaming hot water hit her back and shoulders. The night had turned cool, as it often did in Northern California summers, and the heat felt good. She squirted shower gel onto a puff and ran it up and down her arms and legs, savoring the jasmine smell. Inevitably, her thoughts turned back to Draco.

It really was better that he’d left her alone. True, it wasn’t exactly flattering that he didn’t seem to have too much trouble doing it, that he’d left her so quickly to go and sleep in the second bedroom. Of course… Ginny ran the puff along one foot.

He’d had at least had some kind of physical interest in her earlier. She knew that. To put it in rather graphic terms, she’d _felt_ just how interested he had to be. But honestly, that was what young men always wanted with a halfway attractive and available woman. He might have a string of casual sex partners, but he hadn’t let any hints slip that he might have a serious girlfriend. So there was no reason why he wouldn’t want to take advantage of the situation. His interest in Ginny wasn’t any particular compliment to Ginny herself.

And then… She kept soaping herself and thought further. Then, she’d made it all too clear that she was _not_ interested in casual sex, the type that he doubtless could get from dozens of other women. And if that was all he’d ever really been interested in when it came to her, then it made sense that he would withdraw now. Rather depressing, sense, maybe, but it was still logical.

Ginny moved the shower puff slowly over her hips.  Draco was being polite and thoughtful, in fact, showing that he respected her. He could have seduced her if he wanted to, could be doing it right now, in fact, and he’d refrained. She probably would have succumbed pretty easily, she had to admit. He had to know exactly how strong his powers of persuasion were. He was handsome, intelligent, well dressed, rich… she doubted any girl or woman had ever told him no. The boys she’d known in Portland who had a tenth of his advantages also had egos bigger than the Pacific ocean. But Draco really didn’t seem to. He hadn’t pushed his own considerable advantage, hadn’t pressured her. She felt both glad and sorry at the same time.

Ginny stroked between her thighs. She wished that he had kissed her again. She’d loved that kiss. She’d probably gotten more pleasure out of that kiss than all the sex she’d ever had combined, to tell the truth.

She spread her legs slightly, letting the water caress her most sensitive bits.

The scent of his skin and hair, a mixture of musk and fresh-cut grass…

She leaned back against the shower wall, angling herself just so, the strong sprays of water hitting all the best spots and coaxing the first delicious tingling sensations from her lower body.

His strong, long fingers around the back of her neck, starting to pull her close… oh, and she’d been right about the size of those other parts, too, she had a strong suspicion of that…

Those first warm waves beginning to stir between her legs, just beginning to pulse gently in anticipation…

If only the kiss hadn’t stopped. If only she’d turned and he’d moved his hands down, then back up under her shirt, cupping her breasts, squeezing them, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples….

But then he had broken off the kiss.

Ginny’s eyes blinked open. She suddenly realized just how far her imagination had taken her from only washing herself and remembering that broken kiss.

She scowled in self-disgust and bent down so that the water was hitting her head, beginning to viciously scrub at her hair.

Ginny combed conditioner through the wet strands, poked around in a cabinet, and found jasmine-perfumed lotion. She stroked it over her damp body, trying not to think about what the point of that might be. It was a little self-care, that was all.

She wrapped the silky robe around herself, rather glad that Draco wasn’t going to see her in it, or at least that was what she firmly told herself. It was shorter and more form-fitting than she’d realized when she’s seen it on a hanger, and it exposed most of her legs. The lack of underwear would have been an issue if he’d had any chance of seeing her. If she bent over, anyone watching would get quite a show. She padded back to the bedroom, her mind still running over what had happened—and what hadn’t.

What she’d said to Draco was true. She did not have sex with men she’d known for less than three days; she needed to have some kind of relationship first. Not that she’d really loved Dean or Michael; she understood that now. But they’d been good friends, and deep down, she’d felt that sex was something she owed them both. Michael, for example, had dated her for months before their relationship progressed to that point. He’d wanted sex; Ginny didn’t know how much she wanted it, at least with him, but she was eighteen years old and wasn’t planning to stay a virgin forever. So she’d given him what he wanted. Sex between them had been fine, even fun, but that was all. They’d dated for a few months more and then broken up. Dean was pretty much the same except that they’d gotten down to business a lot sooner. Sex with both of them was nice and pleasant, and that was it. She’d often felt the ghost of some greater pleasure, a whisper or hint of what sex could be. But it never materialized into anything more. That wasn’t their fault. It was just that neither of them had ever tapped some deep vein of passionate feeling in her.

_But Draco might manage to do it,_ she thought.

Ginny slid between the sheets of the bed. They were soft, comfortable cotton, and the pillow was both fluffy and firm. She clicked off the light and expected to drift into sleep right away, but she found herself staring up at the dark underside of the walnut canopy bed, her mind still working.

Maybe it was just that she really wanted casual sex for the first time. Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Pretty much all of her friends had taken many more sexual partners than she’d had. Her friend Luna always claimed that casual sex was fun because fun was the only necessary quality, and there were no strings attached to any of the activities. Ginny was hardly looking for strings of any kind with Draco. But for the first time in her life, she wanted to go to bed with a man to satisfy her own desires--  not just to let him have what he wanted from her because it seemed unfair to do otherwise. Michael and Dean hadn’t been selfish or inconsiderate, they’d tried to give her pleasure, but she had always, always let them have her because it was only fair. It had always been an exchange. But now, it was different. She had found a man she genuinely wanted. Not just because she wanted to please him, although she liked the idea of giving Draco pleasure, very much. But because _she_ wanted to be pleased.

But.. but what if it didn’t work out? What if they had casual sex, he cast her aside for his string of booty calls, and then they had to go on living next to each other and doing business together? She couldn’t even image what a mess that would be.

Ginny flipped her pillow over and tried to go to sleep.

She started to drift off, and as she did, she could almost see and feel another reality, coming into focus, just out of her grasp. It lay on the world around her, lightly touching.  The closer she got to sleep, the clearer it became.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers. And here it is, the first smutty chapter!!

Ginny’s other self was sitting up in the huge canopy bed in Draco’s rooms at Malfoy Manor. He’d left her almost an hour earlier, and fear was gnawing in the pit of her stomach. The dream-Ginny had some idea of what was happening to the teenaged Draco every time he was taken downstairs. The details were unclear, but she knew enough. So she hovered on an edge of suspense every time the rough knock came at the door and the harsh voice beckoned him away from her.

The door clicked open, and she knew he’d come back. Stumbling steps moved towards the bed. One white hand grasped at the bedcurtains, trying to draw them back. The dream-Ginny gasped and reached out, pulling them away, revealing a deathly pale Draco. His eyes were huge and haunted, his body trembling, and both Ginnys had only one thought, to try to comfort him. To do anything she could.

Her other self  took him in her arms and guided him back into the bed with her so that they both leaned against the headboard. He sat stiffly upright, still staring straight ahead. His thin body quivered with the tears he would never shed, not even in front of her. He closed himself off from the whole world. But he was showing at least something of himself to her, the dream-Ginny was thinking;  he trusted her more than anyone else, and she would show him, prove to him, that he was safe with her.

_Shh, shh, it’s all right_ , _I’m here,_ she crooned, rocking him back and forth in her arms, and at last, he relaxed. When he turned his face up to her, she saw his vulnerability, and realized that she could have crushed him with no more than one wrong word.  But the dream-Ginny only smiled and stroked his face. He closed his eyes, leaning into her cupped palm.

 She smoothed her other hand across his back, nuzzling her ear, whispering something into it that Ginny could not quite hear. _Wouldn’t you think that I’d know what my other self is saying? Except that this is a dream, so I guess nothing has to make sense._

Draco stiffened just slightly, shaking his head in a gesture so minute that Ginny wasn’t completely sure he even knew he was making it. Her other self had made some kind of offer, she could pick up that much. Whatever the other Ginny had offered, Draco was refusing it… even though he wanted nothing more than to accept it.  

“It’s… I’m perfectly all right,” he finally said.

“What happened?”

He hesitated, clearly choosing what to tell her, what to leave unsaid. “Cruciatus,” he finally said.

“Oh, Draco, no!”

“It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before. But--” He closed his mouth quickly. The dream-Ginny gave him a strange look, and in return, he did not quite look at her. Some kind of dynamic was passing between the two of them, a set of unspoken messages that had all been spoken before. But there was something different about this time, something unlike all the other times. Or maybe it was more that this was the time when some mysterious conflict between them had come to a head.

_And it’s very important. I’m just not sure why…_

“Are you really all right, Draco?” the other Ginny asked. The words somehow meant more than they said. They’d had this conversation before, Ginny realized.

“Yes,” said Draco, an edge entering his voice. The other Ginny scowled.

“You’re not,” she said flatly. “You need help.”

Ginny groaned inwardly. That was the wrong thing to say. She could see Draco’s face closing against her. The dream Ginny saw it too, and she clearly was not letting him get away with it. She grabbed his hands.

“Draco. Look at me. Come on—don’t do this. I _know._ No, come back here—”

Draco was actually trying to back away. _I wish I knew what the hell they were talking about_! She scanned the teenaged Ginny’s face, then Draco’s. _Come on… help me out here…_

“You can’t know,” said Draco in a small, tight voice, “and I thank all the gods that you don’t.”

_Something to do with what they were talking about? That strange word… Cruciatus… what could it mean?_

 “Draco…” The other Ginny hesitated, and then she told him something that the real Ginny somehow knew her dream counterpart had been holding back for a while.  “I know about the effect.”

Draco’s head jerked up. “No,” he said in a whisper. “You can’t.”

“I do.” She grabbed his arm. “And Draco, you’re not leaving this bed!”

As Draco stared at her, appalled, the real Ginny could have screamed in frustration. Why the hell couldn’t one of them say what they meant? Why couldn’t she figure out the driving force behind all of this? The dream Ginny was offering him help… he wouldn’t accept it…

_I don’t need help, not from you, not from anyone._ Ginny could practically hear that other Draco speaking the lie, and it was a lie. She looked into his young face, painfully young to be feeling such pain, wishing that she could help him as surely as that other Ginny did.

She was starting to feel that she had at least some inkling of why he was refusing her other self. He somehow believed that whatever Ginny was offering, she offered because she felt sorry for him, and he could not accept that from her or anyone else. It was the only explanation for why he’d kissed her so passionately before but was avoiding her now. But the dream-Ginny didn’t understand his motivations, she could tell that much. Or maybe she didn’t really want to understand.

“This was the worst time,” this Ginny was saying now. “Wasn’t it?”

She was grabbing him by the shoulders, pushing him back against the headboard. “Ginny…” he said, almost sounding as if he were pleading.

She suddenly pressed herself against his chest. Her blouse was half undone, so her movement had the effect of plumping her generous breasts upwards so that they spilled over her white lace bra, almost into his face. Draco’s gaze darted downwards, although he was clearly trying to fight that compulsion.

“Wasn’t it?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he admitted in a hoarse whisper.

_Why won’t you let me help you, why? I’m willing to do it._ Ginny could almost hear the unspoken thought from her dream counterpart.

The dream-Ginny moved her chest against his so that a number of buttons straining at their buttonholes suddenly sprang free. The two halves of the blouse parted, and her breasts were exposed even further. Draco’s eyes moved even further down to her nipples, tantalizing dark pink shadows against her creamy skin, a fraction of an inch from popping out of that bra.

“Ginny,” he said weakly, his hands rising to push her away. There was no force behind the movement.

Ginny’s face became grim. She grabbed his hands and placed them firmly on her breasts.

“Ahhh,” groaned Draco, the sound clearly torn out of him against his will. His fingers moved as if they had minds of their own, pawing frantically at Ginny’s breasts even while the rest of his body remained rigid and motionless. _Oh, I’ll bet something’s rigid, all right_ , thought Ginny. His finger and thumb grabbed her nipples on each side, pressing them, squeezing them. Without warning, he suddenly did move, one arm shooting out and yanking her to him like a rag doll. He pressed his hips against her lower body awkwardly, forcing her thighs apart as she knelt in front of him.

The dream Ginny’s eyes flew wide open in alarm. Ginny guessed that she’d unleashed something in Draco that she hadn’t suspected, some savagery that he’d never shown to her before. She tried to scoot away. He growled low in his throat, like an animal, and pushed her against the wall on the other side of the bed. One of his hands grabbed at each side of her bra in front. With another growl, he pulled at the fabric until it tore and fell away, leaving her breasts completely exposed. Ginny gasped.

Draco stopped.

A red flush spread over his face and neck, his skin so pale that it was easy to see. He sat up and stumbled back from her in an uncontrolled movement. The dream-Ginny sat up, trembling, clearly fighting for control herself.

“It’s… it’s okay, Draco,” she said in a squeak. “You don’t have to stop. Really, you don’t—”

His head snapped up. “Yes! Yes, I do,” he hissed. “Do you finally understand, Ginny? Do you see what I’ve become? Do you realize what I almost forced upon you?”

“Don’t be stupid, it wasn’t force!” said the other Ginny. “I’m willing, Draco. I _am_ —” On the last word, she broke down in tears, which Ginny thought didn’t do much to bolster her argument.

Draco sank 1backwards. “I can’t do this,” he whispered. 

And between his silence and her sobs, the information somehow came through at last. Ginny’s heart sank in horror.

Magic was real in this dream world, and Cruciatus was a curse that had been cast on Draco again and again all year long. The Dark Lord, whoever he was, had been particularly cruel in the past few weeks. The curse had been crafted carefully, delicately, so as to cause comparatively little pain. But the real torture was in a certain side effect that this curse had. When it was cast repeatedly with such vicious expertise, it caused unbearable sexual lust. It could not be satisfied by the sufferer. Only another person could help him.

_And this Draco is only seventeen years old… considering how much teenaged boys always want sex anyway, I can’t even imagine what this curse is doing to him… my God, how much he must be suffering. But it doesn’t make sense. Ginny wants to help him. She just offered him… I don’t know what… a hand job or something? Actual sex? He needs it desperately. I don’t know exactly what’s going on between them, but he’s drawn to her, he’s attracted to her, and maybe more. And he’s still refusing her help._

“Please,” choked out the dream-Ginny. “I’ll let you do whatever you like. You can have me, any way you need. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

Draco grimaced, and she understood something that the dream-Ginny did not. That other Ginny was offering herself to him, but what Draco heard in her offer was pity. He was wrong; that wasn’t what the dream-Ginny had meant. But there was also something that this Draco did not understand. The teenaged Ginny  could not phrase her offer in any other way. She had been raised to believe that sex before marriage was wrong, _always_ wrong. The only exception might be if the act somehow saved someone else or served a higher purpose. So this Ginny could justify it to herself in no other way. She couldn’t simply tell Draco that she wanted him, because her desire would be something like sin. She had to get him to take her in order to save himself.

Draco wanted her, had for a long time, but he didn’t want her that way, Ginny realized. He didn’t want to sate his lust on her to ease his suffering. And he had even deeper fears, dark ones that the real Ginny could only glimpse and the dream Ginny knew nothing about.  If he took the other Ginny because he’d lost control, then some part of him would always be afraid that what he’d done to her wasn’t much better than rape. He was afraid, too, that he might hurt her, and that was the one fear that Ginny felt was actually correct. This younger Ginny was a virgin, and this savage, tortured Draco was not capable of being gentle or careful with her now. The real Ginny certainly remembered how painful her own first time had been, even though Michael Corner had been about a million times calmer.

The dream Ginny wiped her tears with a corner of the bedsheet “So you don’t want me?” she demanded. “Can you honestly tell me that?”

_Oh my God, you’re going about it the wrong way_ , Ginny groaned, as if she were both spectator and actor in the scene and the dream-Ginny could actually hear her. _Of course he wants you. That’s not the problem at all. He doesn’t believe that_ you _really want_ him _. And he thinks you’d regret it forever if the two of you had sex now._

The dream-Ginny started moving towards Draco. He was up against the headboard now, and stared at her with lust and fear on his face.

“Tell me the truth,” she said in a steely voice. “You’ve got to. Remember?”

“Yes,” whispered Draco. “I remember.”

_They did something… or she did something to him… so that he can’t lie to her about certain things_ , Ginny thought fuzzily. _Maybe some kind of spell she did once… a Truth potion?_

“Then tell me,” she said relentlessly. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head, but the real Ginny knew that his resistance was reaching a crucial weak point. His hands bunched the coverlet, his knuckles turning white.

In a flash, Ginny could see what was going to happen. The dream-Ginny wouldn’t stop. She would torment Draco beyond endurance, beyond what even his formidable will could withstand. His desire would break all bounds, and he would snap. He would tell her the truth. Then he would take her, because he could do nothing else. But after the madness was over, he would hate himself for doing it, for accepting what he truly believed was only pity on her part. His pride would be wounded, and she didn’t think he could get past that.

And he would also know that he’d taken some kind of hazy ideal first time from her, one that she’d never pictured with him, or so he believed, at least. ( _One that she’d always dreamed of having with someone else? Another boy? Yes. I think so_.) This Ginny’s initiation into sex would be rough and painful and ferocious, the exact opposite of what this Draco had wanted for her.

_Because he’s wanted this for a long time_ , Ginny realized. _He’s wanted her much longer than she’s wanted him. He never dreamed that he could actually have her, and now he can… but this is the only way. It’s a bitter victory._

And yet…

And yet, Ginny could feel the passion pulsing through both of them, not just the Draco who danced on the brink of madness. This Ginny was truly afraid of what she’d unleashed, but she did feel something more than just the desire to help him. She wanted him. She wanted what was about to happen with a desperation that was almost tearing her apart, even though she could not have admitted it.

The dream-Ginny moved forward, reaching up for Draco’s head. Before she had completed the movement, he bent down and pulled the dream-Ginny’s face towards his, ravaging her mouth like he was sucking out her soul, and through her fear, she responded. That other Ginny, the real Ginny herself; she couldn’t tell anymore, they were both melding into one and losing themselves in that endless, savage kiss—

A hoarse shout. It ripped through the fabric of the dream, yanking Ginny back to reality. It all disappeared, the bedroom, the bed, the other Ginny and Draco, everything. Ginny shot bolt upright, batting at the bed curtains, blinking at darkness. She fumbled for the bedside light.

“Lumos,” she whispered, without the faintest idea of what she was saying. She found the switch and turned it on.  The shout came again, and she jumped out of bed and started running to the other end of the room.

The door to the second bedroom had come half open, and she could see Draco leaping out of a bed, his chest heaving. She ran to his side without a second thought. He whipped his head round towards her, but she wasn’t sure he saw her or anything else that was actually in the room.

“Draco! What happened. Are you okay? Did something—”

Without a word, he grabbed her shoulders, lunged forward, and shoved her against the wall in one coiled spring. And then, like the dream-Draco, he kissed her. It was a continuation of the same kiss, and it held the same frantic urgency. His mouth clamped down on hers, ravaged hers; his hands pulled at the back of her neck and he made guttural noises in the back of his throat. Then his big hands went down to her waist, and he yanked her towards him until their bodies slammed together. She gasped. His erection was hard as iron and jammed against her upper thigh, separated from her bare leg by nothing more than his boxer shorts, and generously sized to say the least.

_Holy fuck, he’s huge! No way would I have guessed from how thin he is._

But it was all happening so fast. Much too fast. Ginny was caught between dream and reality, hopelessly confused, and feeling such graphic proof of Draco’s arousal was shocking. She’d half convinced herself that he had zero interest in sex with her, and now… this!

Her hands went up automatically to push him away, but not exactly because she wanted him to stop. It was an instinctive movement that Ginny could not have controlled if she’d tried. His eyes opened fully, and he really seemed to see her. His expression filled with horror.

“Ginny,” he whispered.

He was about to say that he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to attack her like a crazed sex maniac, that he should never have done it, and that he was going to leave her alone now, because he was so ashamed of how he’d behaved. She could hear it all in the way he said her name. But she also heard a depth of desire for her that nobody had ever expressed in her entire life. And like the dream-Ginny, she felt it too.

Draco was backing off, starting to turn away. She launched herself into his arms and kissed him as hard as she could. For an instant, he was motionless, and she could feel a wave of shame starting to wash over her. _Oh God, I literally just threw myself at him and he doesn’t really want me, I’m just imagining it, he just had some kind of weird nightmare and then started to have dream sex, but the same thing would’ve happened with anybody…  I think that can happen after taking Ambien, or something—_

And then he surged forward to meet her.

Somehow, they ended up in the master bedroom, feverish in each other’s arms up against the wall.

 “Tell me what you like, Ginny,” he murmured in her ear. The robe was slipping off her shoulders; just the slightest touch of his thumbs, and it fell. He stared down at her exposed breasts.

“Tell me,” he said hoarsely.  

“Like this,” she whispered, guiding his hands down to her breasts. He cupped the soft flesh, kneading it, his powerful thumb and forefinger squeezing and rolling her hardened nipples between them. She whimpered, arching her back, and he went on and on expertly toying with her breasts. Then he guided her hands up, and she pulled off the pajama top, sighing at the sensation of her fingers on his strong, lean chest and back. His hands moved down to cup her bottom, pulling her up; the kiss went on and on.

 “I want to touch you,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she said, and then his fingers moved between her thighs. Nothing stopped them. _Oh, God, I wasn’t wearing any underwear_ , she fleetingly remembered.

Draco sucked in his breath. “Wet. You’re so wet,” he muttered hoarsely, and she was. And she would have been embarrassed, except that she couldn’t be, my God but he knew where to touch. At the same moment, he ground his hips against her inner thigh a few inches away from his hand, deliberately letting her feel his hard shaft and hard fingers at the same time.

Those fingers slipping between her outer lips, moving up and down, up and down, and finally pressing firmly against the side of her clit. Fire shot through her lower body.

“Mm, mmm, oh, mmmm…” Ginny could barely hear herself, and he kept stroking, stroking, his erection only a couple of inches away, she could almost feel it throbbing towards the place he was preparing for it, and then with one long, hard stroke of his fingers, she convulsed in orgasm. She was still moaning when he began again, just as the first climax was subsiding. The tension built, she could feel the delicious waves about to break, and then _oh fuck_ his long, knobbly finger started to slide inside her. He crooked his fingertip back and touched the hungry eager place that nobody else had ever been able to find, that _she’d_ read so much about but had never found, and her second orgasm exploded, so much deeper, so much more profound than the first, lasting and lasting and lasting, nerve endings that had never been touched convulsing deliciously, satisfied at last. She rocked back and forth, impaling herself on him, shuddering in pleasure.

Except that _he_ wasn’t satisfied. Draco turned his hips and faced her full-on, rubbing himself against the part of her that was still quivering in pleasure, only the thinnest layer of fabric separating them. _He’s even harder than he was before,_ she thought incredulously. He walked her backwards, holding her up when she could barely move, and the bed nudged against the back of her knees. Draco pushed her so that she fell onto the mattress. He stood over her for a long moment. Then he pulled off the boxers, standing nude, his erection so stiff that the head brushed his stomach, limned in the moonlight.

“Now what do you want, Ginny?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

She squirmed.

“Tell me. Or I won’t do it.” He hesitated. “Do you want me?” he whispered.

He sounded unsure in a way she’d never imagined that he could, and her heart twisted. How could he think that she might not want him? But somehow, it seemed that he wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Draco, yes, I want you to… you know… I want that inside me,” she blurted, pointing between his legs. “But I don’t have much experience. And you really are large. So you’re going to have to be careful.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. He pushed her backwards so that she was poised on the edge of the bed, her upper half lying down completely, her head propped up with a pillow, her legs still dangling down. Then he moved forward, standing right against the edge. The bed was so high that he was perfectly positioned to enter her.

He drew her legs up, around his waist, and parted them wide with his hands. The head of his cock nestled between her thighs, and he only stood there for a moment. Ginny caught her breath, looking down at their bodies about to join. The angle made him look even bigger, to the point where she wondered how he was going to get inside her.

“Now,” she whispered, before she lost her nerve. He nodded. Then he began to push between her legs, very gently.

She could actually watch what he was doing. He moved slowly, and the huge bell-shaped head of his erection hesitated at her entrance. _Is that actually going to fit? He’s just so big… What if we can’t make it work?_ The thought flitted across her mind, and she trembled nervously. He leaned down and kissed her neck until she relaxed into the feel of his lips on her skin. He reached down and stroked her folds gently, his fingers lingering on the most sensitive spots, and she felt him opening her, stretching her, the large hard shaft slipping between her outer lips, then pressing firmly against her inmost entrance.

With another hard thrust, he could enter her, Ginny thought, and for a split second she tensed, sure that he was going to do it. _I wonder if this is actually going to hurt,_ she thought. _How can it not?_ It was like her very first time again, as if she had even less experience than she’d had then, as if all her other experience,  limited as it was, had melted away and Draco was her very first lover. _Just like with that other Ginny… oooooh…._

His fingers kept moving steadily, and Ginny forgot all about any other realities or alternate universes as nerves that she didn’t even know she had began to come to life. It was going to happen again, this incredible pleasure that Draco brought to her, and it would be the best yet. When she felt the first twinges of pleasure begin to course through her, she moaned; she couldn’t help it. As if that had been a signal, Draco flexed his hips forward again. She hazily saw between half-closed eyes that the first few inches of his length were disappearing inside her. Then she suddenly felt him, so big, so immediate, spreading and opening her body, and she sucked in her breath. He stopped, leaning down to her, kissing the side of the neck, whispering that she was beautiful, that she was perfect, that he’d never felt anything so good, and she relaxed slightly. He pushed his hips forward harder, then harder still, and his eyes closed tightly. Ginny panted, digging her fingernails into his hips; he was so overwhelming and there was no part of her that he wasn’t opening, and for a moment he really was almost hurting her. But he reached down and steadily stroked her naked clit again and again, and she cried out as another climax crashed through her body, the perfect delicious pulses going on endlessly, gripping around his length.

He thrust through each wave of orgasm, pausing, grimacing as she seized around him, and she understood dimly that he was struggling not to come before he’d even gotten himself all the way inside her. A delicious sense of power streaked through Ginny. She was bringing him pleasure even as he was preparing her, making her ready for himself, and it was so much pleasure that he could barely hold onto his control. Bit by bit, she felt herself open completely to him. And when she sneaked another peek, he was inside her all the way.

“Ohh,” he groaned, and he thrust into her as if he could not wait one more second, withdrawing, thrusting, withdrawing, thrusting, and she lifted her hips to meet his, and it was so perfect, so complete, so unlike anything she’d ever felt, but then he was groaning in pleasure and collapsing on top of her, shuddering. She felt him convulse and break inside her, pulsing in wave after wave of climax; she held him tightly and felt him lose himself in her.

At last, he relaxed, and helped her further up the bed so that they could both lie down. Now that the fierce heat of the moment was over, Ginny was starting to come back to earth. _Oh my God. What have I done? I never ever thought I’d do anything like this in my entire life… but it was so amazing, it was the best I’ve ever felt. I can’t regret it._

Draco turned to her, his face open and happy. He smiled and lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. She looked at him, indescribable emotions churning within her, wondering if there was something, anything that she could say. She opened her mouth.

A tremendous booming sound rang out from the other side of the room.

Ginny sprang up as if the sound were ice water down her back, and so did he. They exchanged a brief look and then wordlessly hurried into their clothes.

Draco fumbled at the ring of keys on the dresser table. “Bedroom, bedroom closet, two keys for that, it doesn’t make any sense…” He grabbed Ginny’s hand, and together, they walked forward. Draco took a deep breath and flung open the closet door, turning on the light at the same moment.

Ginny could see that the closet was empty; a few robes on hangers, but that was all. But the sound came again, louder this time.

“It’s… it’s coming from the floor,” she said.

Draco nodded and knelt on the floorboards. Ginny went with him, her hands clenching into fists. She would not be afraid of this, whatever it was, would not. He found a key, inserted it into a lock that was set into a board, and pulled up a large trapdoor. Ginny was sure that it would lead down into darkness, but it didn’t. The space underneath was lit with a bare hanging bulb.

“We’ve got to go down there,” said Draco. Ginny nodded, gathered all her courage, and took Draco’s hand. He went down the hanging steps, pulling her behind him, and they dropped down to a smooth concrete floor. A tunnel stretched ahead of them. _We shouldn’t just go down there, we should go back and get a flashlight, a knife from the kitchen, a shotgun, something…_

Without warning, the trapdoor slammed shut above them. They were left in the pool of harsh light below the floor.

“We have to go on, don’t we?” whispered Ginny.

“I think so,” said Draco, his face wary but determined. “The solution is here, somewhere. Don’t you feel it?”

Oh yes. She did.

  
“Okay,” said Ginny swiftly, before she lost her courage.

Together, they began to walk down a long, straight tunnel, moving from patches of darkness to pools of light under bare bulbs stuck into fixtures on the wall. After a few minutes, a cool breeze wafted across them. They were reaching the end, Ginny knew it instinctively. The tunnel suddenly opened out into a large, bare room. The answer to the mystery was here. She knew that, too.

As they stood silently, footsteps ran towards them from the other direction. Ginny steeled herself and turned to face whatever horrible mystery was about to be revealed.

Colin ran into the room, panting. He skidded to a halt in the middle of the floor and looked round wildly.

“Ginny!” he gasped. ‘I found you. Oh thank God. I was so worried.”

Somehow, Ginny doubted that Colin was what—or who—they’d been chasing after.

“Colly, what are you doing here?” she asked.

He started twisting his fingers. “Well, I got back from work, and I heard this horrible noise. Like somebody banging on the floor, but from _under_ the floor. I thought of an earthquake right away, but that wouldn’t just be making a noise, right? So I ran out into the living room, and that’s where it seemed to be coming from, the floor on the far right side, I mean, right by that door that leads outside.”

_That’s exactly where that loose floorboard is, the one where I used to hide things with Ron,_ realized Ginny. _And today, this morning, that’s where I felt that draft of air that I couldn’t understand. It was from this underground room!_

“Well, anyway,” said Colin, “I went outside and heard the booming noise coming even louder from the door to the storm cellar. Did you know there was a storm cellar? Anyway, there is, except I guess there really isn’t one because it actually led here. I opened it, and it led almost right into this room. But I didn’t think I was going to see you here! And, um…” Colin’s voice faltered as he glanced at Draco. Ginny realized that her blouse was buttoned crookedly, her face was flushed red, and her jeans were only half fastened. Meanwhile, Draco’s hair was all on end and he was wearing a rumpled pajama top and boxers. What they’d been doing was obvious, to put it mildly.

“Him,” Colin settled on saying. “Hi, Draco… Um, I don’t exactly understand. Where did you come from?”

“This is connected to the Kilkare Mansion,” said Ginny. “We came from a closet in the bedroom—there was a trapdoor, and we heard the same noise.” Too late, she realized that if there had been any doubt as to exactly what she and Draco had been doing, she’d just removed the last shred. Although this was hardly the time to get embarrassed because Colin knew they’d had sex.

“I don’t understand,” Colin said rather pitifully. “What’s going on? Can’t anybody tell me?”

Suddenly, Ginny shivered. Goose bumps were rising on her arms. She turned round, towards the chill wind blowing towards them all, and saw what she now realized she had somehow known she would see all along.

_Who_ she would see.

The tall, cadaverous form of Thomas Riddle, dressed all in black. His back was to the light and she could make out none of his features clearly, but she could not have mistaken him for anyone else in the world.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And now, the penultimate chapter! Which means, the last one is right after this. Enjoy. A head's up... the NEXT chapter is the one that earns the warnings.

 

Colin’s quick, frightened breathing seemed to be filling the room. Draco had her hand in a death grip. Ginny was the one who looked up and faced him squarely, the figure of mystery, the one man who tied all the threads together.

“I knew it would be you,” she said.

Thomas Riddle smiled, which was a sight that Ginny realized she had hoped she would never have to see.

“Ah, yes,” he said, in his low, deep voice. “If anyone began to truly understand the nature of these events, I guessed that it would be you. But I highly doubt that you have reached full understanding as of yet.”

“I think you’d better start explaining it all to us, then,” said Draco, in a cut-glass voice that Ginny somehow knew he only used when he was actually terrified.

“Yes, I suppose that I ought to do so. But first… there is something that you must see.” Thomas Riddle walked forward a few steps, into the larger room, so that the overhead light illuminated his face instead of concealing it in shadow.

Ginny gasped, and her intake of breath was echoed by Draco’s.

“Do you know who I am?” The man addressed his question to them both.

“You’re… Val DeMont,” Ginny said in a tiny thread of voice. “My great-uncle.”

“Victor D’Marais,” said Draco. “My mother’s cousin.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “And yet no. I am a far more distant relation than that to either of you…” He nodded to Colin, who looked terrified. “And even to you. All purebloods are distant cousins of some sort. And I suppose that I ought to apologize to you, Mr. Creevey, for failing to learn that your mother was indeed a halfblood and kept the news from her husband and children. But then again, your fate is far happier in this reality than the other.”

Ginny scrambled to make some kind of sense of what Thomas Riddle was saying. _Pureblood… what the hell… something to do with horses? Colin’s fate? And this reality? Wait, that must mean he’s saying that there’s some other reality somewhere._   That thought struck a chill in her, and she had no idea why.

“And then too,” he went on, “my other name is Voldemort. A truer name, in some ways, but here, I must go by the name of my birth.” He looked directly at Ginny for the first time, and she was drawn in by his dark eyes even as she struggled to resist.

“You knew me by that name, as your other self,” he said softly. “Ah yes, you knew me very well indeed. I was a handsome boy then, only a few years older than yourself. You poured out your secrets and your troubles to me, to your friend Tom,  do you recall? And I listened, oh yes, I listened. Dear little Ginny… only a child, yet so precocious, so close to ripening… you were a prize that I so very nearly claimed.”

Ginny shuddered so hard that she nearly fell.

Thomas Riddle reached out his long, bone-white hand towards her face. She could only watch, as hypnotized as a bird by a snake.

“I so very nearly managed to take form before you were rescued,” he said in that smooth, dark voice. “If I had succeeded… ah, I would have left my mark on you indeed. What a beauty you have grown to be. I always knew that you would…” Hi fingers were a hair’s breadth from her skin.

Then Draco lunged forward and slapped his hand away.

Thomas Riddle blinked, as if broken out of his own spell. Anger flashed across his thin pale face, but he controlled it immediately.

“And you, Draco, my dear boy,” he said. “Do you recall our, ah… friendship? I certainly recall when you were infatuated with all that I represented, with the power that I could offer. True, you were never as amenable in person. Not as a child; not as an older boy. Sad.” He shook his head in mock sorrow.

_Oh no, oh no, oh no,_ Ginny thought numbly. _What is he saying?_ She was afraid that she almost knew. This strange man was talking about that other Ginny and Draco, how he had tried to shape and scar them both. What the hell did he do to Draco when he was a boy… or what did he try to do… Oh yes, she was afraid of knowing that for sure, but she suspected.

“And look at what you’ve grown to be, this other self of yours,” Thomas Riddle went on. “You’re far less suspicious, as well, not as guarded, not as closed… and just as handsome as the Draco whom I know far better than I do you…”

“No,” said Ginny. “You get away from him.” She felt as if she were floating above herself, terrified of speaking to this man, yet anchored by her determination not to let him hurt Draco any further. Whoever this other Draco was, and whatever Thomas Riddle’s counterpart had really done to him, he’d hurt him in ways that she could not imagine. She would not allow any part of the same thing to happen to her Draco.

The cadaverous man only laughed. “Such a spitfire. But really, my dear Draco, this matter is only between the two of us, and has nothing to do with her. She was a delight in bed, I’m sure, but you mustn’t allow her to distract you.”

Draco shook his head.

“Tell me the truth,” he said hoarsely. “All of it. You’re right. Ginny has nothing to do with it. This is only between us. And you’re the only one who can do it.”

_No_ , thought Ginny hopelessly. _He’ll draw you in, Draco, he’ll manipulate you, he’ll end up hurting you as surely as he did the other Draco in that other reality. We’ve got to get away… we have to escape…_

She could not move a muscle. When she shot a quick glance at Colin, he looked so terrified that she could hardly believe he was staying on his feet. No help there. _Please,_ she prayed. _Please, can’t something happen to help us…_

“Yes, he can, but he never will,” said a somehow familiar voice. “Thomas Riddle, or Voldemort, or whatever he chooses to call himself—he was a liar from the very beginning. Hmm, that sounds familiar somehow.”

Ginny’s head shot up to see the small, round man who was coming towards them.

“Mr. Bufflebuns?” she asked incredulously.

“None other, in both that world and this,” said the lawyer, or whatever he actually was. “And Mr. Riddle, I’d advise that you bugger off to your own reality and leave these fine young people alone.”

Thomas Riddle whirled round and faced Mr. Bufflebuns. “Oh, yes,” he hissed. “You. I ought to have known that you’d stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

“But it very much does,” said Mr. Bufflebuns, striding forward.

“Not at all.” Riddle drew himself up to his full height. ‘You have no power here. You could not keep me from the dark art of blending realities, of seizing power in all through one. And only Draco truly has the power to accept or reject me here.” He leaned close to Draco, who did not move. “You betrayed me in that other reality, you see. You gave up the chance for power that you cannot even imagine. But not in this one. You fear that you can never accomplish anything on your own account, isn’t that so? That you would fail in business if not for your father’s money. You are afraid that you will always fail. I can relieve that fear.”

“You’ve forgotten to mention a few pertinent facts, Riddle,” said Mr. Bufflebuns in a voice of iron. “Such as… _you_ were responsible for the auto accident that killed Draco’s family, and most of Ginny’s as well. You left the smaller house to Ginny not out of the goodness of your heart, shall we say, but because you knew that the only way to gain power was to bring her and Draco together. Oh, I’d say that your intentions are anything but good ones.”

“That is a lie,” said Riddle silkily, but there was an edge of fear in his voice for the first time. “Draco. Listen to me. Only I can offer you power beyond your wildest dreams. You can go to that other world. You can take the other Draco’s place. What is anything else to that? What is _she_?” He pointed a skeletal finger at Ginny. “Nothing.”

Incredibly, a smile quirked up half of Draco’s face. “Oh, she’s something, all right.” With those words, he yanked out the wand that was stuck into the waistband of his boxers and thrust it at Thomas Riddle in one swift movement.

“ _Aroint ye_!”

Riddle babbled promises, offers, and finally threats, but Draco kept the wand steadily pointed at him. At last, he gave a scream and faded into dark mist. Then there was nothing but the cool, fresh breeze blowing through the underground room, scented with fennel and sage and long grass.

Mr. Bufflebuns beamed at them. “A happy ending,” he said. “I do _so_ love those.” He turned to Ginny. “I rather think that your real estate problem is solved now, but there will still be some loose ends and tiresome paperwork to clear up. Come and see me next week—oh dear. And I think you ought to help Mr. Creevey upstairs at once.”

Colin gave a moan and slithered onto the floor. In the confusion of hauling him back up the yard and then the living room, finding cold water and elevating his feet, arguing about whether or not somebody should call 911, and finally making coffee as a last resort, Mr. Bufflebuns slipped away.

“You’re dead on your feet, Ginny,” she heard Draco saying, as if from a great distance. She would have argued the point, but a huge yawn almost split her face in half, and she couldn’t come up with any coherent words.

“Come on,” he said, and led her to the little bedroom in her house, and she vaguely felt him taking off her clothes and bundling her into a robe. He lay down next to her then in the small bed, his arm round her waist, his breath ruffling her hair, and she relaxed and went to sleep.

_July 12, 2002_

_Sunol, CA_

“Men are just dogs,” Colin proclaimed over waffles at the breakfast table. “They get what they want, they say they’ll call you, and then they never do and you keep checking your phone every ninety seconds to see if they sent a text, and—” He stopped.

“It’s not like that, is it?” he asked Ginny in a quieter voice.

“No, it’s not at all,” sighed Ginny. It was true. Draco had left for his business trips the next morning, but she’d already known he would do that. They’d barely spoken then; she simply hadn’t known what to say, and seemingly, neither had he. He’d called her the next day, and a couple more times too. He’d texted her more than once. They’d emailed. She was the one who sent stilted replies, who talked in a guarded way. She did not know what to make of the insane series of events that had happened just before he left. He didn’t seem to either. But he obviously wanted to see her again after he got back, whatever their future meetings did or didn’t lead to.

“Colin, nothing that happened made any sense at all,” said Ginny, rubbing her face.

“It sure didn’t,” Colin admitted. “And I only saw the ending. But I have a theory.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” groaned Ginny. She poured more coffee with a feeling that she would need it.

“Maybe there was some kind of psychedelic gas seeping into the connected basements from an underground spring. I read somewhere that this is what actually happens at Lourdes, and that’s why everybody thinks they see the Virgin Mary. Where was it… _New Age Crystal Psychic Times_? Never mind. The point is,  we all hallucinated the whole thing. None of it really happened.”

Ginny raised an eyebrow. “Then why did we all hallucinate the _same_ thing?”

Colin sighed, slumping back into his chair. “Well, if you’re going to be rational about this, then I really don’t know what to say. But are you going to see Draco when he gets back? Please, just tell me you’re going to do that.”

She nodded. “We’re meeting at that Starbucks.”

“Good. There’s no pressure, it’s a `public place, but if you need to have a big heavy conversation, you can take him back to the house.” He patted her hand. “I think this is going to work out, Gin. I have a good feeling about it.”

Ginny met Draco the next day at the Starbucks between Sunol and San Jose. Colin kept winking and making encouraging gestures at her from behind the counter until she really feared for his job security. But he eventually settled down, and Ginny sipped her latte. Draco seemed unusually occupied with an iced green tea.

“So,” he finally said.

“So,” Ginny agreed.

They’d already run over all the small talk she could think of—his business trip, the weather, the meeting with Mr. Bufflebuns where he assured her that the difficulties with the deed to her house were clearing up rapidly. Either they were going to have to start really talking about something, thought Ginny, or they were going to go their separate ways and be booty call partners, at best. _Business booty call? Is that a thing?_

“I—” she began.

“Are you—” Draco said at the same moment.

She gave a short laugh under her breath. “Look, I’m not sure what exactly to say,” she admitted.

“I know exactly what you mean.” Draco let out his breath in a long sigh. “Ginny…” She almost jumped when he took her hand. “What happened last week was so bizarre that it’s impossible to know what to say about it. But I do want to keep seeing you.”

“I do, too,” she said, a happy flutter in her heart. “Do you want to just never mention it again?” she added, when he said nothing further.

“No,” he said after a long pause. “I mean, I do want to discuss what happened. Or certain parts of it, at least.”

“So do I,” she said with a sigh of relief. “But probably not here.”

Colin grinned and waved as they saw him leaving. His manager looked as if he were about to lose his mind at any second—Harry Potter, Ginny thought that Colin had said was his name—so Ginny took pity on him and left with Draco.

He drove back to her house, and they both went inside. Ginny was never exactly sure why it seemed so natural and easy to end up in the bedroom, but they did. They sat on the edge of the bed, holding hands, and Draco began to speak softly.

“I wanted to tell you about what happened the night before… the one we spent together. I had a strange dream, a recurring nightmare, really.”

She moved them both up so that they sat against the wall, the lamplight glowing “What was it about?” she asked, just as quietly. Very few specific memories of the dream she’d had on the night he mentioned were clear to her, but even though it had been frightening in a way, she was pretty sure it hadn’t been a nightmare. _But of course we wouldn’t be having the same dream! I don’t know what I’m even thinking… and he isn’t talking about the same night._

He shook his head. “I’m not exactly sure. But I’ve had it before. It was about—Thomas Riddle, or Voldemort, or whatever name he should be called by. I didn’t really know his identity at the time. But something was different, this time.”

“What?”

“I was afraid for you, because you were somehow involved in it.” He clasped her hand tighter. “That’s why I decided the next day that I would not talk about the past, our past, that summer when we were children. I felt that there was danger for you in saying a single word about it.”

“Then why’d you finally do it?” she asked.

He smiled. “You can be pretty persuasive.”

She laughed. “So can you.”

“Yes, well… what I meant to tell you…” His voice turned serious again. “Is that the events of the next night basically are what I dreamed. It was a precognitive dream, I suppose.”

Ginny gave a long sigh. “What the hell does all this mean?”

“I really don’t know. But there’s something else. The next night, when you heard me shouting…” He gave her a sly smile. “I was dreaming then, too. It wasn’t a nightmare, though.”

She caught her breath. “Draco. What exactly was your dream?”

He blushed slightly. “All right, I’ll tell you. I won’t pretend that I remember all the details, but… I was that other Draco, the one that Riddle was talking about.”

“But you were younger, weren’t you?” said Ginny. “About seventeen.”

“Yes.” He gave her a strange look. “How did you know?”

“Never mind, just tell me the rest of the dream.”

“I can’t remember much more very distinctly, but I was in Malfoy Manor. You had sneaked in to see me, and it was dangerous in some way. And… ah… we were in a bed, and we were about to have sex. There was an incredible desperation to what was happening, to what that Draco needed, to what that Ginny was offering. When I woke up and you came into the room, it seemed like a continuation of the dream—at first, anyway.” He looked at her earnestly, and a thought flashed across her mind. _That other Draco can’t look at that other Ginny in the same way. He doesn’t have the kind of openness that my Draco has, the easy tenderness. He’s had a very difficult life in that other world, privileged, sure, but with pressures that this Draco has never known. Thank God he hasn’t._

“Ginny, I need to know that you wanted what happened between us as much as I did,” he said, breaking into her thoughts.

“Of course I did!” She smacked him lightly on the arm.

He actually looked relieved. “Look, it’s just that I wasn’t sure if you were interested in me or not before we… you know… that night.”

Ginny laughed. She couldn’t help it.

“Oh God, there goes the last shred of my ego,” groaned Draco. He started to get up. She pulled at his hand with very little force, and he gave way suspiciously easy.

“I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have laughed. But I don’t understand,” said Ginny. “I’m sure that you’ve had girls throw themselves at you since about seventh grade. How could be nervous about whether or not _I’d_ want _you_?”

Draco laughed. “You should have seen me before I was about seventeen years old. I had the pointiest rat face you could ever imagine. I was short; I was skinny; I wore the thickest glasses on the planet. I changed, obviously.”

He held up a hand to stroke the side of her face. “But you… You’re beautiful Ginny.”

“Seriously? Beautiful? Me?” She flushed.

“Yes.”

She lay with her head against his shoulder for a while, realizing that she had to tell him the truth. “Draco, I’m not going to say that I remember too many of the details either. But I had the same dream.”

He gave her a long, measured look. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “But what I wish I knew is exactly what happened after the part we both saw. I mean, we… um, we must have had gone on to have sex. But you’re right, it all felt so rushed and frantic.”

“I don’t remember almost anything specific,” said Draco. “I wish I could. But I’m pretty sure that it was your first time.”

“Oh.” She had to fight not to look away from him; the statement seemed unbearably intimate.  “Was it yours?”

“Ah… no.” He looked rather embarrassed.

 She struggled to put her next thoughts into words. “I don’t know why, but I feel that it’s important to know what happened between that other Draco and Ginny. Maybe because it’s important to them. I know how crazy this sounds, but... I feel that we could both go back into the dream and find out.”

“So do I,” said Draco.

She turned off the light and they lay down together. He breathed softly and evenly next to her, and she drifted into a state between sleep and waking. With no warning, she was back in the dream. It picked up exactly where it had last left off, and she knew that her Draco was there, too.

 


End file.
